


gods and monsters.

by LLReid



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Arthurian Mythology, Bloodbound (Visual Novels)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Bisexuality, Cambions, Canon LGBTQ Character, Demigods, Dysfunctional Family, Eventual Smut, Exhibitionism, F/F, Family Feels, Feminist Themes, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Character of Color, LGBTQ Female Character, LGBTQ Themes, Love at First Sight, Magic, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Murder, Mythology References, Original Mythology, Other, Past Abuse, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Bond, Reincarnation, Romantic Soulmates, Same-Sex Marriage, Shameless Smut, Strap-Ons, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Urban Legends, Vampires, Witches, Wizards
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:36:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 70,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28491771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLReid/pseuds/LLReid
Summary: Each chapter is inspired by a different song.~~~~Dread flooded Kamilah at the sound of the words uttered by Lily in the dark. The ancient vampire turned and looked at her protégé, intent on telling her she was not being stealthy enough, but anything she could’ve said died on her lips when she noticed that Lily was staring up at the sky in awe.There it was, hanging in the sky above City Hall: a blazing green serpent wound through a silver skull sat on a bed of crimson roses, the mark wizards and witches of The Order of Avalon left behind whenever they had entered a mortal building... wherever they had murdered in the name of their cause.It was a mark she had first seen in the late fourteenth century when Gaius had started the whole disgusting organisation in tow with the other figureheads of the supernatural communities of the day. It was a mark she was familiar with, having been roped into many attacks of mortals who’d offended Gaius in some way— but the whole thing had fallen apart centuries earlier... and she hadn’t seen the mark since.
Relationships: Kamilah Sayeed/Anastasia Sayeed, Kamilah Sayeed/Main Character (Bloodbound)
Comments: 39
Kudos: 58





	1. when the violence causes silence.

**Author's Note:**

> This work is loosely inspired by my BB5 fic that I accidentally deleted. The archive can’t restore it and I don’t have it saved anywhere, so I can’t remember exactly what I wrote/where I was going with it. 
> 
> Rather than try to rewrite it exactly and get frustrated with myself in the process, I’ve decided to try to write you all something even better (that is in no way related to my previous BB4 fic). ❤️

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; Zombie (Acoustic Version) by Bad Wolves

~~~~ Mydiea, Greece ~~~~

“I asked one thing of you!,” Anastasia sobbed. “One thing, Kami—“

“To let you die!,” the ancient vampire sobbed right back at her wife. Her strong arms clawing at Anastasia’s waist, trying to stop her... trying to keep her.

She couldn’t lose her.

She wouldn’t. 

Panic surged through Kamilah as she clung to the love of her life, knowing that this was the only way. Knowing that this was their last few seconds together after close to fifty years of love. Knowing that she had to lose the one person in the world she couldn’t bear to be without. 

She had always both loved and loathed that Anastasia fundamentally had to do what was right — but she did not get to choose which parts of her to love or to accept. Love it or loathe it, this was who she was.

That was why she was here, instead of running for her life. 

That was why she’d incapacitated their entire family, to stop them from stopping her.

She was here because the terrible thing she had to do in the greater good would only physically harm her and save the lives of billions. 

She was here because beneath all that power, she was good. 

Much too good for this world. 

Much too gentle to have to be stranded in the awkward position of being against the ones who were against peace, and also against the ones who were for it... but unwilling to make the sacrifice that needed to be made in order to achieve it.

“You asked me to let you die!,” cried Kamilah. “You are my wife—“

“Your wife isn’t the one asking,” the redhead said desperately.

“The Bloodkeeper commands me?”

Anastasia’s bottom lip trembled as she caressed her face and pressed a kiss to her sweaty brow. “Yes.”

“How can you ask this of me?,” she asked tearfully. “Please, Annie. Please don’t. If you loved me, you would not be asking me to do this—“

“Shh,” Anastasia whispered, pressing her brow to hers. “I do love you. You know I do. I love you more than life itself. Nothing matters in this world but that you live, that’s why I have to go. Can you do that for me? Can you live?”

“Not without you!,” she sobbed, clinging to her tighter and bunching her top into her fists as if that would make her stay. “You are the only person I care about, the only person who reminds me I am alive. Not empty. And not alone.” 

Alive. 

Not empty. 

Not alone.

“Don’t leave me,” she said, practically hyperventilating. “Please don’t leave me—“

“This is what I have to do,” Anastasia sniffled. “You all saw my power with your own eyes, and chose to believe what you could understand, rather than what was true— this is the only way anyone can be safe and the world can go back to the way that it was. I have to do this. There is no other choice—“

“You don’t know this is the only way—“

“I do know that!,” Anastasia cried. “I am the only one who knows that!”

“Stay with me,” she begged. “Please... please...”

“I want to, sweetheart. You know that I do.” She pressed another kiss to her brow. “But that is not a choice I can make, Kami. It’s either me or risking the lives of billions of other people on this planet— I am the only one who is powerful enough to stop this—“

“If you unleash that much power it will tear you apart!”

“I know,” Anastasia whispered, smoothing her dark hair out of her face. “I know.”

The Bloodkeeper looked desperate. Kamilah felt that way. She wasn't about to be separated from her. No. She simply would not allow it.

“I’m not letting you go,” she said, clutching at her tighter. “I forbid it. No. You’re not doing this.”

“No matter what, I'll always be with you," Anastasia promised.

A desperate sob caught in the back of her throat. It was an awful thing to be so logical. To know that the Bloodkeeper’s duty must always take priority above matters of her heart. It didn’t ease the pain at all to know this as she stood in front of a person who was her whole world and was told she was not enough to keep her here. That she was not the choice... to be but a shadow to a person who was her moon and stars.

Before she could so much as open her mouth she went careening backwards as if an invisible puppeteer had tugged on a string. She flew over the all too familiar bloody scene that once again stained Mydiea red, until she slammed into the marble wall beside their family... all of them utterly powerless to move in The Bloodkeeper’s unbreakable hold.

“Annie!,” she screamed so hysterically her throat immediately began to sting like she’d swallowed a dozen razor blades. “Don’t you dare— You promised you’d never leave me! Please don’t! I can’t—“

Anastasia struggled to steady herself on her feet across the room and cast a heart wrenching glance her way. “I love you with my entire heart and soul. There will be nothing to be afraid of soon,” she said, her voice breaking as she tried to smile for her sake. “Be good— be the woman I know and love. I—“ She wiped roughly at her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“Annie,” Kamilah whimpered, sounding more broken than anybody had ever heard her. There would be no bringing her back this time. “I can’t— Please don’t leave me—“ She struggled fruitlessly against her psychic bounds, screaming like a woman possessed by the devil himself. “I love you! I love you— Annie— My Annie—“

“Forgive me,” Anastasia breathed. 

“Annie—“

And with one last look at her, The Bloodkeeper bravely turned away from her for the last time. Turned away to face her death. To make one final sacrifice for the good of the world.

Strange that so many had named her a goddess, or the goddess’ chosen. Blessed by something greater and further beyond the realms of anybody’s understanding. Elevated to what she was by something only she could comprehend. When all evidence pointed to the opposite. In Anastasia’s mind, her abilities came from corruption, from a scourge that killed most. 

She was not the goddess’ chosen, as so many believed, but the goddess’ cursed.

Screams echoed through the cavernous ancient temple. Hysterical cries of anguish as ancient power ricocheted off the walls and the Earth itself began to tremble. Anastasia’s power engulfed the entire room, swallowing their enemy, shattering glass sculptures, pummelling ancient statues to smithereens. Shards of glass from the skylights rained down on the struggling vampires trying to reach their friend, slicing their skin and falling where they may.

Kamilah lowered her head and beat against her psychic bindings, fists balled, teeth clenched, the roaring in her ears loud and total. Deafening. She saw only her beloved’s bloody face as she looked back up, her beautiful mouth moving, saying something in her direction, one last ‘I love you’, and her ancient heart swelled with horrendous rage.

This world had asked too much of her. It had hurt her. And for that everybody in it deserved to walk upon crippled legs.

“Annie,” she whimpered, freezing in fear as she felt the power in the room begin to multiply. As every ounce of power bound to Anastasia’s blood poured into the atmosphere and painted everything with an ominous crimson filter.

The sight before her was amazing, more splendid than she could’ve imagined as every ounce of her wife’s power made itself known to the world. She really did feel small, and large, everything and nothing, sitting here on the rim of the world.

From the outside, it looked like a cage of lightening and fire, but it was a cage of Anastasia’s own making — or perhaps it was the cage she’d been born into, one that was never really as figurative as everybody had believed it to be and was now visible to the naked eye. A cage that only she could control.

The power had no end and no beginning. It was the beast that had haunted her steps for as long as she had drawn breath. That had tormented her ancestors to the brink of insanity, and Anastasia free-fell into it, welcomed it with the bravery a thousand warriors.

Kamilah screamed and screamed, and did everything she possibly could to shake herself free of Anastasia’s hold... but she couldn’t. Her heart beating too fast. She had always known she had no chance at finding a woman of her own, one who might be able to love her, to live with her, to understand her, and in the blink of an eye that had turned around. Just as fast, she was being taken from her.

The heat and the crimson light in the room became so blinding that they all had to look away and the trembling of the earth intensified. No matter how much she might want to feel her, to run to her, she could not. She had to keep her eyes down, and away from the fire of the dying Bloodkeeper. She must freeze her heart to the one person who insisted on setting it ablaze. For a few seconds they shook and they shook, gritting their teeth against the scorching heat, and then everything fell completely still.

Horrifyingly still.

It was the stillness of death.

Kamilah didn’t know exactly why, but she was reminded of something her wife had taught her once, long ago. 

Vampires destroyed. It was the one constant of their kind.

She’d seen that firsthand. With Gaius. In the Opera House. On every bloody battlefield she’d ever fought. In the way vampires were treated by those who wanted the world to go back to the way at once had been when mortals reigned supreme.

But the world was always changing. 

They destroyed, but they also rebuilt.

With that one gesture Anastasia had once again changed the future for everybody, and destroyed her own. 

When Kamilah felt the bindings on her limbs dissipate and looked up, her Annie was gone. All that was left of her a diamond wedding set laying in a pile of ashes, glimmering like a burning ember in the smokey light.

Lily and Adrian both tried to hold her back, to allow somebody else to inspect the scene before she did... but she shoved them both off and ran as fast as her trembling legs could carry her. 

“Annie?,” she whimpered, stopping at the precipice of the small pile of ash crowned with her wife’s wedding set. She gagged at the sight of it and her breath caught in the back of her throat. 

The blood was everywhere.

Anastasia’s blood, mostly.

“Annie?,” she said a little clearer, squeezing her eyes shut as if that would make it all better.

This couldn’t be happening.

Not again.

She couldn’t really be gone.

There was just no way.

“Annie!,” she screamed, looking frantically around the room as her chest began to tighten and she fell to her knees. “Annie!”

“She’s gone, mon amie,” Serafine whispered, kneeling behind her beside Adrian and burying her face in his neck. “She saved us.”

Panic attacks were like earthquakes and the one Kamilah broke into was one unlike any she’d ever had before. She crumbled to pieces as her soul shattered. 

She had both chosen and been forced to do many, many horrible things. Depraved, despicable things that would condemn her soul to hell. Yet nothing had ever made her feel as filthy as she did at that very moment... having done nothing whilst her wife died.

“How could she think I could ever live without her?” She let out a choked sob, the weight of her grief bending her two. “I can’t. I can’t—“

“Kamilah,” Adrian sobbed.

“Kill me,” she begged through her sobs. “Please— My Annie— My darling—“

Without a word of warning, Adrian enveloped her in his arms and Kamilah glanced despondently up at him and saw that somehow he’d come back to himself even though there were tears pouring down his cheeks. He’d contained all that terrible sorrow and anger and fear, enough to make ten strong men fall down like babies. 

He held it all inside of him and straightened his shoulders, his chin level, and Kamilah couldn’t understand it — where he got the strength to hide that awful, bloody wound in his soul — but she admired him for it.

Admired him and loved him for being strong for her, as he knew only too well the pain of losing one’s wife so horrifically.

She felt an answering wound open within her own soul, a kind of faint reflection of all the pain he also endured, just because he cared for her.

“She wanted you to live,” Adrian whispered.

“I’ve lived!,” she wailed into his chest, convulsing with the weight of her grief as it crushed her. In her whole life she’d felt nothing like this. Nothing that even came close to this agony besides those four long days she’d endured between her first death and her awakening. “I just—“ She cut herself off with a sob. “I want— I need my Annie.”

“There has to be some way to bring her back,” Serafine cried in disbelief. “She can’t be—“

“She’s gone!,” Lily snapped as she punched the marble floor hard enough that the tiles cracked beneath her fist. “She’s gone! Jax is gone! Liv is gone! Everybody just keeps fucking dying on me— and they’re not coming back—“ She cut herself off abruptly as her tears started to flow. “They ain’t coming back! None of them!”

“Lily,” Adrian sobbed.

“My sister is dead!,” Lily cried. “This ain’t like last time! She’s ash— what is it with her and leaping into an abyss?”

“What if there was a way, though?,” Serafine whispered though her tears. “How far would you all be willing to go?”

Kamilah turned to her and snarled, “Speak plainly! If there is any way I can be with my Annie, you will tell me! I will go to the ends of the Earth and kill a thousand men if need be—“

“A few weeks ago as we were training with Kano, Anastasia spoke of odd visions of the past she had been having,” Serafine said as she wiped her face. “Memories.”

“Whose memories?,” Adrian sniffled.

“She refused to name the person, though we had our suspicions it was Phampira herself—“

“Do not even mention that name in my presence!,” Kamilah snapped.

She already felt herself spiralling into the worst version of herself. Into everything Gaius had created her to be. A monster. A bastard. A killer. Had it not been for her sweet Annie, she’d have had no use for any gentle feelings whatsoever.

“Shhhh,” Adrian soothed, stroking her hair as he smiled at Serafine apologetically on her behalf.

She wasn’t angry with Serafine in the slightest... but her sadness tended to mask itself as anger and everybody knew that — and none of them held it against her. She’d apologise herself once she’d calmed down... but nobody knew how long it would take her to come back to her senses. Nobody knew how to help her because Anastasia had always been the one to hold her through her pain and wipe away her tears. 

“Ancient memories,” Serafine continued slowly. “Back when the gods roamed the Earth and ancient supernatural creatures roamed free— before the existence of vampires and the beginning of the mortal’s reign of terror on the world. It was some sort of ritual that awakened the dead and Anastasia wondered if she’d be able to bring back Jax... but she could never control these visions as she could normally do with ease.”

“And Kano?,” Kamilah prodded. “What did he think of these visions?”

“He told her that no ritual he knew of could awaken the dead,” Serafine sighed. “But our dear Anastasia seemed convinced something could come of it and—“

“Why wouldn’t she tell me any of this?,” she grumbled.

“She didn’t want to get your hopes up,” Serafine said. “For if she managed to find a way to awaken Jax... she’d be able to not only awaken your brother, but everyone dear to us that we’ve lost.”

“Eleanor,” Adrian breathed. “Charles...”

Serafine nodded. “That was all she told us,” she said quickly. “I don’t know anything else— unless she’s written anything in her diaries that we could potentially use to figure these visions out and bring to fruition—“

“She wrote every night for decades and has all of her old diaries on a shelf at home,” Kamilah interjected with tears still pouring down her cheeks. “There must be something of use... perhaps even in her childhood scrawlings— she recorded everything meticulously.”

Serafine wiped at her cheeks. “Will you allow us to help you look at them?”

“How is your Russian?,” she asked weakly. “Even though I’ve never read the diaries contents, she loathed writing in English to the point I would be surprised to find a single word of it written in her hand.”

“It’s passable,” Adrian nodded, “but I’m not fluent by any means.”

“Very good,” Serafine breathed. “I spent twenty years in St. Petersburg during the reign of my good friend Alexander Alexandrovich and often visited dear Maria Feodorovna in her later years in Denmark... sad old woman that she was.”

All eyes fell on Lily and the young vampire roughly wiped at her bloodshot eyes. “I’ll bring y’all snacks— just— just find a way to bring our girl home. Please.”

“As wonderful as this all sounds, she sacrificed herself for us... because she believed it to be the only way vampires could go on existing in the face of the latest attack to our peace,” Adrian said quietly. “Her power was the only thing that could save us... and it did. Can we really disregard that selflessness and undo what she did for us?”

“I will get my Annie back, everyone else be damned!”

“That sweet girl’s entire existence was to bear hurt in order to give mercy and forgiveness, and right up until her last breath she was completely unselfish. Killing herself to save us all, again. We owe it to her to do everything we can to bring her back,” Serafine said.

At that, Kamilah broke down once again. She didn’t actually recognise any of her emotions anymore. There was no such thing as plain joy or grief. It was horror and relief and panic and gratitude and bone-crushing-agony all jumbled together.

“Tell me right now,” she said to Serafine, “do you honestly believe there is a way to bring her back or are you simply refusing to accept her loss?”

“Both,” Serafine whimpered. “She wouldn’t have mentioned this vision to us if it were not important.”

“It is next to nothing to go on—“

“It is more than enough!,” Kamilah shrieked, practically cutting off Lily’s hand as she tried to brush the pile of Anastasia’s ashes into an old ceramic vase that had somehow survived the battle and landed on the floor. Her protégé meant well. She knew that she did... but all she felt was panic at the thought of anybody else touching what remained of her beloved. “Don’t touch her! Nobody will dare touch her—“

“Shhhh,” Adrian soothed, drawing her into his arms again and holding her as tightly as he could. He wasn’t nearly strong enough to physically restrain her whilst she was so prone to lashing out, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try. “Nobody is touching her. Nobody will do anything you don’t want us to. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay—“

“None of this is okay!,” she wailed. “That pile of ash is my Annie!”

“If there is any way we can get her back, we will,” he whispered in her ear. “We have time and an almost unlimited pool of resources. We’ll get her back.”

Rather than fill her heart with ecstasy or gladness, this minuscule breakthrough overpowered her with dread. The things she loved most had a habit of being torn from her grasp. The people she loved most had a habit of dying when she had come to need them... and she’d never needed anybody as much as she needed Anastasia. 

With ice cold hands that trembled violently, she reached out and grabbed her wife’s wedding set — that she hadn’t taken off even once since the day she had slid it onto her finger and committed herself to her forevermore. Anastasia had developed the nervous habit of fiddling with the jewels repeatedly long ago, and she imagined her touching them as she brushed her thumb over them before clutching the trinket to her chest.

It was like she didn't know herself anymore. It had been so long since she’d felt so lonely, like she was inhabited by something that wasn't her at all, and that thing was so terrible, so alien in its newness and aching familiarity, she couldn't bring herself to talk about it. She let the tears come pouring out of her, and once she started, she wasn't sure she’d ever be able to stop without her wife in her arms once more.

It would be too easy to let herself drown. Part of her wanted to. But if Anastasia had taught her anything, it was the power of persistence and belief in oneself... and she believed she would damn well sooner die trying to bring her back before she ever accepted her Annie would never return to her. 

Incredible. It was just incredible in a disgustingly macabre way that she could even try to think clearly when her face was so cold and wet she couldn’t actually feel it anymore, and she knew perfectly well she was surrounded by death, and the only way to force herself to stay alive was to endure the howling wind and hold her course. 

And still, even though it had no right to be now that Anastasia was gone, the sky overhead was beautiful.

If it took a thousand years, it didn’t matter.

Ten thousand.

A million.

She had nothing left to lose. So she was going to dare it. Once she was set on a task, once she made up her mind, she was relentless.

She’d see her again.

She’d find her.

~~~~ Three Months Earlier - New York, NY ~~~~

“Oh shit.”

Dread flooded Kamilah at the sound of the words uttered by Lily in the dark. The ancient vampire turned and looked at her protégé, intent on telling her she was not being stealthy enough, but anything she could’ve said died on her lips when she noticed that Lily was staring up at the sky in awe.

There it was, hanging in the sky above City Hall: a blazing green serpent wound through a silver skull sat on a bed of crimson roses, the mark wizards and witches of The Order of Avalon left behind whenever they had entered a mortal building... wherever they had murdered in the name of their cause. 

It was a mark she had first seen in the late fourteenth century when Gaius had started the whole disgusting organisation in tow with the other figureheads of the supernatural communities of the day. It was a mark she was familiar with, having been roped into many attacks of mortals who’d offended Gaius in some way— but the whole thing had fallen apart centuries earlier... and she hadn’t seen the mark since.

Her blood ran cold at the very sight of it, at the way the scary glow of ghoulish red dotted the city like a plague that was taking over an otherwise healthy body.

She stood in the shadows, her skin crawling with the need to move. Something was wrong. Not just wrong. Whatever her churning gut was about, she'd never quite felt the urgency of finding the source of the trouble as she did right then... not since discovering Gaius had escaped the onyx sarcophagus all those years ago.

“When did it appear?,” asked Kamilah, and her hand clenched tightly on Lily’s shoulder as the fool pulled out her phone to add to her social media. 

Lily grumbled softly and pocketed the iPhone before she could even snap a picture. Kamilah’s fingers prodding into her skin like white-hot pokers and her thoroughly unimpressed glare boring into her.

“Must have been a few minutes ago, Ms. Kamilah,” Nikhil said, “it wasn’t there when I went into the bodega to get Adrian’s refreshments but when I got out—” 

“We need to return to The Shadow Den at once,” said Kamilah as she quickly pulled out her phone and typed out a message to Anastasia, who had an entire night filled with meetings at Raines Corp that would likely all have to be cancelled in the wake of this development. She snapped her own picture and attached it to the message, thoroughly ignoring Lily’s grumblings all the while. “Adrian—“

“No one was harmed,” he said, staggering a little as he craned his neck to look at the cloud floating overhead. “There are few mortals still at work but everyone in the building is untouched. There was no attack. Why would— He’s been dead for years and as far as I know, The Order died out long before him—“

“Well that’s obviously not the case,” Kamilah snapped. “There are obviously some fools longing for the return of the old ways.”

Adrian sighed and ran his hand through his hair as they began walking as quickly as they could through the quiet streets of Manhattan. Thankfully at this hour on a Wednesday night most mortals were at home sleeping, with the ones out either too drunk or high to believe what they were seeing if they looked up at the sky.

“Who?,” Adrian pressed. “Every vampire we know who went along with it has been dead for centuries—“

“We don’t know if there are even any vampires involved,” she interjected. “Gaius allied with the witches, the werewolves, and the fae. Perhaps they have their own agenda—“

“Yo, does someone wanna tell me what in the actual fuck y’all are talking about?,” Lily huffed. “This mad knock off Death Eater symbol appears and y’all start freaking the fuck out—“

“Nobody is freaking out,” she deadpanned.

That was a lie.

She was indeed, freaking the fuck out.

“Girl, I’ve known you for decades. You get an even bigger stick up your ass than usual when you’re freaking the fuck out about something.”

“Not the time to insult her,” Adrian whispered, clapping the fool affectionately on the shoulder. “We’ll explain everything when we’re in a secure location and Anastasia and Serafine arrive.”

“Just tell me if Voldemort is gonna jump out avada-kedavra my ass,” Lily deadpanned. “This whole unpredictable lifestyle we lead does absolutely nothing for my complexion. So if imma be killed by a dark wizard, I’d like the chance to prepare and get myself suitably shit-faced beforehand. I don’t wanna die sober.”

“Don’t make me stab you,” Kamilah growled as her pace increased and she glanced down at her phone. Anastasia and Serafine were both already on their way to The Shadow Den and that gave her a great sense of peace... at a time like this she needed the family to be close together. That way she’d know they were all safe.

That... and she really needed a hug from her wife.

Just looking at that awful mark glowing ominously in the sky above her was enough to make her feel like she couldn’t quite breathe. To make her want to lash out and burn this entire world to the ground to erase any traces of that dark chapter of her history that may still remain— that did still remain and seemed to be returning to haunt her once again.

“Does Anastasia know?,” Adrian whispered to her as Lily and Nikhil spoke amongst themselves. “Does she know the part we once played in this?”

“She can access the memory of every vampire—“

“Just because she can, doesn’t mean she has,” he said, his eyes misty and his face usually pale. “You haven’t told her. Have you?”

“There are a great many sins I have committed I haven’t mentioned— not because I think she’ll think less of me for being honest, but because I’m simply not ready to admit to myself how much hurt that I had a hand in causing,” she muttered. 

“This seems like a pretty substantial chapter of your story to simply skim over—“

“When was the last time you thought of your involvement with this sick organisation?,” she snapped.

Adrian swallowed thickly. “It has been— Well, I suppose it has been some time. I tend to focus on the fact that we disobeyed him as often as we obeyed—“

“Perhaps you did,” she sighed, shaking her head in dismay. “You weren’t around at the start. You didn’t see it at the height of its influence— the blood you shed in its name is a lake, whereas the blood I shed is an ocean of my own making.”

“You know your story is not so black and white. You did what you had to do in order to survive, sister,” he said softly. “He would’ve tortured you had you refused him— he did torture you for more than two thousand years.”

“Being abused the way I was is not an excuse to abuse others,” she sighed, looking away from him. There was this strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, like when you're swimming and you want to put your feet down on something solid, but the water turned out to be much deeper than you first thought it was and there was nothing there to stand on. Adrian meant well. He really did. But she would not allow him to simply assuage her of the guilt that was hers to bear. “I may have had my reasons for participating which my personal torment explains,” she continued, “but it does not excuse it. So please don’t try to shift all of the blame to him... because it wasn’t.”

Her eyes were full of sadness and wisdom as she regarded her brother, who nodded resolutely. Full. And... at the same time, empty. Soulless. Like some of the more horrible immortal creatures whose company she’d kept in her long life. Most vampires were frightening... but Kamilah in this state of despair, she was bone-chilling.

They walked on in silence and she saw the remnants of a worn Broadway poster stuck to the wooden barricades around a construction sight with the words: ‘you cannot escape your fate’ printed on it. Though she stared at the bold print, the words seemed meant for her. Adrian and she were both, in a moment, the same. They were victims and they were villains. They’d kept silent when they should have spoken out— only in hindsight could they understand that when fear and self-righteousness sparked hatred into action, people forgot themselves.

As they rounded the corner onto the block that held the concealed entrance of The Shadow Den she saw Anastasia approaching just as quickly from the opposite end of the street, and at the sight of her she started off running towards her like she was returning from war. She looked safe and well, and her heartbeat sounded steady enough that at first listen it sounded like she hadn’t a worry in the world, but she simply wouldn’t be able to settle until she had her in her arms.

Her expressionless mask had slipped the moment she saw her, her fierce demons and turbulent needs mixed with dark, ferocious passion. Kamilah would never be like other women. She would always be dominant, scary to enemies, and yet unimaginably gentle with the woman she loved.

“Are you alright?,” she said frantically as she tugged The Bloodkeeper into a bone crushing embrace. “Did anyone try to harm you on your way here? Did—“

“Sweetheart, you’re trembling,” Anastasia interjected, framing her face in her hands. She immediately began brushing her thumbs across her cheekbones and drew her down so that their brows were rested gently together. “You’re really shaking, Kami—“

“Are you absolutely sure you’re alright?,” she whispered whilst running her hands over her petite frame, as if only to convince herself that all was well. “You didn’t pick up on any nefarious psychic energy on the way here, did you?”

“I’m fine. I promise I’m fine,” Anastasia said gently, her glacial eyes never leaving hers, “but you’re clearly not, so why don’t we go inside and we can talk? Hmm?”

She nodded tightly and wrapped one of her arms around her slight shoulders and grabbed the hilt of her dagger with the other. As they walked she positioned her body like a protective shield around her wife against an enemy still concealed in distant shadows... but Anastasia didn’t try to tell her she was being ridiculous or mention the very obvious fact that she was more than capable of protecting herself. Instead she allowed her to coddle her, knowing that it actually helped her anxiety a great deal if she was allowed to feel like she was actively protecting her.

Despite her power, Anastasia was so young and she could be incredibly soft and sensitive. She liked to feel like she was providing armour for her.

She loved the phrase: soul mate. It was moments like this that she recalled she and Lysimachus had asked their mother what it meant and she had said, 'Two people who understand each other without talking about it. Two halves of a whole.’

And she knew now how true that was.

“Try to steady your breathing for me, love,” Anastasia whispered whilst rubbing gentle circles on her back as they walked. “You’re getting close to hyperventilating. Match my breaths.”

She kissed her hair and did as she was asked without complaint. She took a series of deep, steadying breaths and relaxed into her wife’s soothing touch. Had anyone else pointed out she was dangerously close to dissolving into a full blown panic attack, she likely would’ve stabbed them in the fragile state of mind she was in. 

But Anastasia radiated calm, her otherworldly energy peaceful, surrounding her in a cocoon of tranquility. She made her so feel safe, wrapped up in their world together, even though she knew deep down neither of them was.

Her hand rubbed up and down her back and she found she enjoyed it. Not just the touch, but the feeling that filled her being at the thought of being so accepted. At the thought of her loving her so much. To have gained the kind of absolute faith and trust Anastasia had earned from her, she had shown her in every way that she would always be there for her. That trust between them could never be in any way taken for granted or abused.

“It took you all long enough to arrive!,” Serafine pouted as they walked into Jax’s old quarters, where they often met to discuss important business. She had been drawn from a night of partying in one of her newest Gansevoort clubs, so was in quite a ridiculous state of undress in an outfit that was hardly more than a few strips of shimmery silver fabric... and entirely unpractical given the weather. “When you stated you had an emergency I ran—“

She shut up the moment Kamilah shoved her cellphone in her face, showing her the picture that she’d taken. All at once every ounce of blood in her face seemed to drain and she staggered on her feet, falling back against the small breakfast table that stood just off of the kitchenette.

“Is that urgent enough for you?,” she growled.

“How is this possible?” Nobody missed the violent tremor that wracked through her body as she combed a hand through her dark curls. “This should not be possible— everyone is long dead!”

“Does anyone want to fill Lily and I in on what is happening, or should I just look back at memories—“

“No!,” she, Serafine, and Adrian all practically screamed in unison.

Anastasia and Lily shared an alarmed glance. Kamilah’s heart clenched at the sight of her wife flinching and her throat bobbing, the way it always did whenever anybody raised their voice in her presence, even when it wasn’t directed at her in anger. It was a reflex. Something she’d been conditioned into since the earliest days of her childhood.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean that,” she breathed, drawing Anastasia into a hug and pressing a series of apologetic kisses to her hair. “We weren’t yelling at you we just— I don’t want you seeing anything from anybody’s perspective until I’ve had a chance to explain myself— until we’ve all had a chance to explain ourselves.”

Anastasia nodded and swallowed thickly. “You’re starting to scare me— tell me what’s wrong because we all already know I’m going to have to lead the community through whatever it is. The sooner I know, the sooner I can start fixing the problem.”

Everybody nodded and they sat themselves down in the small living area Jax had furnished with a mismatched couch and set of armchairs in his life. All eyes fell to Kamilah, as she was the eldest and the one who’d been involved with Gaius the longest. She hated that she was the one that had to lead the conversation... but she knew it was only right.

“You’re well aware Gaius loathed mortals,” she began, her eyes falling to her wife’s knuckles as she traced over them repeatedly with her thumb. “That he wanted to create a world where vampires reigned supreme and mortals would exist as little more than cattle to sustain us... but what I’ve never told you is how far he went in his quest to achieve this dream... or how many other supernatural communities shared his ideals.”

Anastasia nodded slowly. “I thought you’d told me why you originally came to America with him—“

“No, my love, before that. Many, many lifetimes before that.” She sighed and then cleared her throat in a desperate bid to loosen off the tightness that had already begun to constrict her breathing. “In the year 1352 he and I settled in Southern Bavaria and stayed until 1367 when we were forced out of the village we were residing in by an angry mob of mortals who’d discovered the truth about what we were.”

“How did they figure it out?,” Lily asked. 

For a long moment she stayed silent and tried to summon the courage she needed to speak the truth. “He— we... tortured a gaggle of vampire hunters to death that had been hunting us since the moment we left Japan when they eventually tracked us down. One somehow managed to escape us and ran to the village for help— which wound up in a massacre with no survivors. We killed hundreds that night... perhaps even thousands. We spared no one.”

Anastasia squeezed her hand tightly.

“It was one of the bloodiest massacres I’ve ever witnessed, so much so that it alerted nearby packs of werewolves, fae, and covens of witches and wizards— long story short, as we feasted Gaius got to talking with their leaders and they all decided they were sick of living in fear of mortals discovering their existence.” She paused and took a deep, steadying breath, “and they decided they would take no more oppression.”

“Kami,” Anastasia breathed, “what did you do?”

“An order was started that night. The Order of Avalon— the name was the idea of the most powerful wizard in the world at the time, Merlin—“

“Oh snap! Merlin?!,” yelped Lily. “He was real?!”

“Indeed,” Kamilah sighed. “I take it you’re familiar with the mortal legends?”

“Duh!”

She nodded and bit down anxiously on her bottom lip. “The man we knew was a monster. Second only to Gaius in his thirst for blood and power— the two of them lead a bloody crusade of supernatural beings across Europe and Asia that lasted for centuries, until we left to continue the fight in the new world in 1701.”

“Wait... he was immortal?,” Anastasia puzzled. “Don't witches and wizards have mortal lifespans?”

“Indeed, he was immortal,” Kamilah nodded. “None of us ever knew how, as none of his fellow wizards were.”

“His mind was impenetrable,” Serafine nodded, looking at Anastasia with a furrowed brow. “Not at all unlike yours, ma petite. Many of the same rumours and clouds of mystery that surrounded him now surround you.”

The Bloodkeeper cleared her throat. “What happened to him?”

“Nobody knows,” Adrian murmured. “He simply... disappeared. I doubt he’s dead, as Gaius claimed, though. I may only have seen him once in person but he didn’t strike me as the sort who’d go down without taking everything with a pulse down with him.”

“And y’all think it’s homeboy bringing out his inner Death Eater?,” Lily said through a mouthful of dry Lucky Charms cereal she was eating straight from the box with her hands.

She didn’t answer right away, as she simply didn’t want to believe that the only man besides Gaius that she’d ever feared was still out there. No, she wanted to believe that Gaius had snapped and killed him like he’d bragged about doing on multiple occasions. Or that he’d been killed on Gaius’ orders, perhaps by Banner or Marcel, as she highly doubted Gaius would’ve considered him important enough to bloody his own hands with.

Tensions had began brewing between the two men in the later years of their reign of terror, though she hadn’t been permitted to know exactly why. From the stories Gaius had told, it had seemed Merlin had been nothing more than a coward who’d gotten in too far and then panicked when he stopped to realise what he’d done... but that didn’t sound at all like the man she’d known.

Though one didn’t just hand in their resignation to The Order of Avalon or Gaius Augustine. It was a lifetime of servitude and bowing at his feet or death with absolutely no in between.

“I need you to look into Gaius’ memories,” she said to Anastasia. “We saw him for the last time on April 24th 1799 in Moscow. I need you to tell me if he killed him or not.”

Anastasia nodded sharply and took a deep breath to centre herself. “April 24th 1799 in Moscow,” she repeated. “Got it.”

The room fell silent as her eyes fell closed, with the only audible sound Lily’s hand rustling in the cereal box on her lap. The rustling was followed by lots of crunching and muttered curse words at the scarcity of marshmallows. Which was then followed by more rustling.

It was enough to drive a saint to madness.

“If he’s alive... you do realise she is the only one even remotely powerful enough to take him on, don’t you?,” Serafine whispered to her, her eyes never leaving Anastasia.

Kamilah nodded tightly and gently stroked her hand down the length of her waist-length hair, keeping her touch light enough as not to jostle her out of her psychic trance. It was a glory of copper fire that evening, shining like a whisky still in a candlelit room, long and loose in gentle flames down the entirety of her back.

“I know,” she whispered, her heart clenching violently in her chest. “But if she defeated Rheya Apostolous and Gaius Augustine, I highly doubt a wizard with a bad attitude is going to be a problem.”

Serafine and Adrian exchanged glances that made it clear they thought she was being overly optimistic, but she didn’t care what anybody thought. She had faith in her wife.

The truth was what Anastasia made it. She was powerful enough that she could set this world on fire and call it rain, and people would agree with her.

The young vampire at Kamilah’s side had been born to an invisible crown. Want had nothing to with her upbringing and earliest days as a vampire, neither had freewill. Want and freewill had been stamped out of her at a young age, replaced by an unshakable sense of duty, by what both Gaius and Rheya had shown her a leader should not be.

She spent much of her first few years as a vampire afraid of this figurative throne she sat upon the way most children were afraid of monsters lurking under their beds. But even though she may not have always enjoyed having to lead, she was most certainly really very good at it.

“Shhhh. Shhhh,” she soothed as Anastasia emerged from her trance suddenly, gasping for breath and trembling from the strain she’d just put herself through. “You’re safe. You’re with me. You’re safe.”

Anastasia nodded frantically and turned to look her in the eyes. “He’s alive, Kami. Merlin. He’s alive.”

~~~~ 1700 - Paris, France ~~~~

“You are so strange," Merlin whispered to Kamilah with something like awe as a means of announcing his presence as he waltzed into her bedroom as she was beginning to undress for bed.

She froze for a moment but decided immediately that she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her uncomfortable. So before turning to him, she took a long luxurious sip from the bottle of red wine she’d been working on since being allowed to retire from the night’s meetings.

Where the mortals got the idea he was a white-bearded old man, she simply didn’t know. He was young looking, despite his age. Tall. Dark. Handsome. What most women who didn’t know him would consider attractive and desirable in a partner.

But people were complicated creatures. There was so much more to everybody than you realised at first glance... and Merlin was no exception. He may have exuded a gentle sort of awkwardness at first sight... but he was about as much a fairy princess as she.

He was dark and twisted. Sadistic and relentless in his lust for mortal blood... not the sort of person she wanted too close when she was in her right mind.

“I assure you, I am not the strange one.”

“You are. Do you not understand that? You always have been,” he said softly, leaning against the doorframe. His voice. It was incredibly unique. Low. Soothing, yet the same time, there was absolute command, as if he ruled the world and knew it. “You are a woman with the mind of a man—“

“Spoken like a true misogynist.”

He chuckled heartily and moved so that he was standing right behind her. “You mustn’t think me prejudiced. You know me better than that, do you not?”

“Stop,” she breathed as his fingertips brushed the back of her corset.

“That is not what you said last night.”

“You got me drunk.” She stepped out of his reach, needing to put some space between them. “I did not know what I was doing.”

“And the night before?”

“The very same— if he finds you in here with me he will take his anger out on me and pour you a beer. Leave.”

Her blood ran cold at the very thought of how Gaius would react if he found out she’d slept with Merlin. She could do whoever she wanted, once. It was when she went back for seconds that he began to get miffed at her. The anticipation of what he would do to her to ensure she learned her lesson was every bit as sickening in her mind as when it was really going to happen.

He sighed. “You have all this power that everyone envies... and you look like you would give it away without a second thought in a heartbeat. He has you trapped.”

She scoffed. “Is that what you believe?”

“It is what I know.”

“Leave,” she whispered.

He was right, but she wasn’t about to admit it to herself or to him. There was glory and honour in being chosen to stand at the side of Gaius Augustine. But not much room for freewill— no room for freewill, actually.

The wizard huffed and drummed his fingernails against the mahogany wood of the fireplace he was stood at, simply watching the vampire from behind. “You are as good as the queen of vampires, but you do not like being queen,” he continued, “but you do it willingly and honestly as some sort of penance for what happened after he murdered you. You have never tried to step aside, though it is fairly obvious you hate it—“

“Stop,” she snapped, whirling around to face him. “A few lapses in judgement does not mean that you know me.”

“Lapses of judgement?,” he scoffed. “Kamilah, I have known you for centuries.”

“You see only what I wish for you to see, you fool.”

He stepped forwards and tried to take her hands but she evaded and drove her hairpin into the side of his neck, burying the bejewelled hair ornament all the way up to the flowery bauble at the end. He choked, blood spattering from his mouth, and clawed at his throat before tearing the makeshift weapon out and taking a moment to compose himself — healing as a vampire would — as she stormed off to the far side of the room.

“Was that really necessary?,” he sighed.

“Indeed,” she breathed. “I asked you to leave me be.”

“You may have told me to leave... but your eyes are begging me to stay.”

“You are not the exceptional lover you believe yourself to be,” she replied so dismissively that her words were almost cruel. “There is nothing you can give me that I cannot accomplish even better with my own two hands. Now leave.”

“And he can?!,” snapped the wizard.

She said nothing and averted her eyes out of her bedroom windows and onto the quiet streets below. It was far too early for most mortals to be awake and going about their business and far too late for most intelligent vampires to even consider venturing outside. The only sounds were that of the occasional passing carriage and the wind rustling the sparse Autumn trees in the rain.

She hadn’t told anybody of the exceedingly odd dreams she’d been having, that her mind often drifted back to in moments like this one when she’d rather not be alive. Strange that she should spend so much of her time dwelling on a dream as opposed to actually living... but that was exactly what was happening.

She was always in danger. Always. She felt every minute of the day that she was walking a tightrope and any moment she was going to fall. Part of her just wanted it over... and her pleasant dreams provided her with an escape where there was none.

As the wizard talked at her, her mind travelled back to the red hair she’d seen when she’d closed her eyes in the consecutive seven nights before. All she recalled was staring and talking to a girl with red hair and an amused face for what seemed to be a few minutes; and then, feeling that the groups in such a place should mix, rose to her feet. To her astonishment, she discovered the whole garden the were stood in completely empty. Everyone had gone long ago, it had seemed, and the girl with red hair in a beautiful pale blue ballgown that matched her eyes had then scurried away herself with a rather hurried apology... and she’d glanced over her shoulder at her when Kamilah had asked her name and said the oddest things in response before disappearing completely. 

“Find me, Kami,” the nameless woman in the dream had told her. 

“Where?,” she had prodded. She wasn’t on guard with her, for some bizarre reason she couldn’t quite place. Perhaps it had been their surroundings— something about the scent of fresh soil calmed her. Earth’s perfume. It reminded her that she was part of the whole of the world... took her out of herself for a bit.

“You know where,” the woman had said. Her accent was one she couldn’t quite place... at first it sounded vaguely Russian with random interludes of words and phrases somehow appearing almost cut-glass English. It was very muddled. She’d never heard anybody else speak in a voice so heavenly... so enrapturing.

All she could do was stare at the stranger. Where was her sharp intellect? She relied on her brain. She could think fast and was good at details. When this woman danced through her dreams, the only details she could remember were how her smile was so beautiful and how her voice was so gentle and yet compelling. 

“I do?”

“You do.” Her blue eyes had settled on her and seemed to pierce through her very heart. She looked at her like she knew her. Like she knew her very well. “Keep going. You have to keep going.”

“What does that mean?”

“It is so hard trying to say what you mean without frightening people,” the woman had winked... cheeky little thing that she was, apparently. She’d smiled at her then and they’d stared at one another in silence before she’d said, “You're a good woman, Kami. No matter what, you're a good woman... with a gentle soul.”

“I have no soul,” she had responded.

She couldn’t fool her into believing she could see something that she knew wasn’t there. If she had a soul she’d be able to die and try as she might, she could not.

“Just because that’s what you believe, it doesn’t make it true.”

She recalled the way the woman had smiled at her, how she had felt like one who wanted to trap and cage a little bird, and after years of waiting and luring and baiting found that she must do no more than hold out her hand, and the finch landed on her finger and did not fly away. You scarcely dared to move when something like that happened. It rested on your hand whole and free, foolishly trusting and infinitely courageous. It would never be more beautiful.

The girl’s smile had been so beautiful and sweet she knew that if kindness had a face, that was it. She was a complete stranger to her, but she knew that a connection between them had started there in those odd dreams, their shadows touching coiling together in the moonlight, their eyes meeting.

Whilst it was only a dream and Kamilah did not even know this woman’s name, let alone why she would refer to her as ‘Kami’, or where she might be that she required finding, she left her with a sense of champagne in her head, which she could not afterwards explain. She was certain she’d never met her before in her waking life... for if she had, she’d have remembered the exact time and place she encountered such a breathtaking beauty for the rest of her life.

In the wild events which were to follow each day as she woke, this mysterious girl had no part at all; she never saw her again until all she closed her eyes and the tale of each day was over. And yet, in some indescribable way, she kept recurring like a motive in music through all her mad adventures afterwards, through her loneliness, and the glory of her strange hair ran like a red thread through those dark and ill-drawn tapestries of the night. For what followed each time she appeared to her was so improbable that it might well have been the product of the amount of wine she consumed: for when she thought of this woman, all she ever felt was a great sense of peace.

Odd, the sense of hope this woman who did not exist seemed to give her. A mere figment of her own imagination. Hope was the most treacherous thing in the world. It lifted you and then let you plummet. But as long as you were being lifted you didn’t seem to worry too much about plummeting.

“Numbing the pain he inflicts upon you for a short while will only make it worse when you finally feel it, Kamilah,” he said, his tone gentler than it had been a moment before. “You have shown bravery beyond anything I could have expected of anyone these past centuries we had ridden across the continent, brothers in arms.”

She huffed. “Why is it you men are always so profoundly shocked when a woman demonstrates herself your equal? It is really rather exhausting.”

Women who had power were always feared and ogled by oafs like Merlin. For in a world of men they were all mere looking glasses, women, who in their mind existed only to reflect their images back to them as they'd like to be seen. Hollow vessels of women to be rinsed of their own ambitions, wants, and opinions, just waiting to be filled with the cool, tepid water of gracious compliance. A woman who refused to bend to their whims and shower them with compliments for performing the bare minimum acts of decency frightened them terribly.

“Apologies,” he breathed. “I ask you to fight with me one last time. To demonstrate your courage once again.”

She looked across the room at him with a highly unamused glower painted across her face. “And why would I do that?”

“Join me and together we will kill him. Together we will win your freedom—“

“Stop.”

“You are afraid of him! Doing the thing you are scared of is much harder than not being afraid of anything, Kamilah. It is easy to be brave. It is not so easy to be scared and do a brave thing anyway—“

“If you do not leave my quarters at once I will kill you,” she growled, knowing better than to buy into this fantasy. 

“You wouldn’t know how,” the wizard muttered. 

Her brow furrowed. Whilst she tried to practice self discipline at all times, this was one of those times when she needed to stay very calm or a head was going to be separated from shoulders. Deep inside, the volcano that could emerge was at a boiling point... but she reeled it in and simply sighed, “Wouldn’t I?”

“No,” he said plainly. “You wouldn’t.”

At that he stormed off like a spoiled child, ensuring to slam the bedroom door behind him with a wave of his hand.

All she could do was roll her eyes in response as she made her way back to her vanity to continue her beauty routine, and one look at her reflection in the mirror and she could see the familiar creep of ice in her flesh. Not many people knew where it came from, only that it arrived in the rare moments of quiet, when things were still, when she was allowed to be entirely alone and she could think. When she remembered all she’d done, and what had been done to her... what the world had made of her. The ice seemed to sit where her heart should be, where a heart definitely had been once, threatening to split her open.

Her strong arms curled around her chest, trying to stop the pain. It worked a little bit if she closed her eyes and imagined it was her mother hugging her, letting warmth back into her. But where the ice melted, it left behind only emptiness. An abyss. And she never seemed to know how to fill it back up. 

All she saw was a monster when she looked in the mirror. She was no longer afraid of getting old, as she had been as a girl. Indeed, looking into her own eyes she couldn’t actually believe she had ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant.

But mainly, so very, very stupid. 

She desperately wanted to grow old. For her life to end.

Or perhaps she just wanted to cease being stuck, being dragged along through the world in search of somebody else’s desires. 

She was so lonely. She wanted a family. Whilst she could find the odd man attractive, she wanted a wife. Someone to come home to— a home to return to. Someone to care for, to take care of. She needed a purpose. Her lifestyle had no balance. She needed someone to become her centre, to anchor her.

She needed to stop seeing the shell of a long forgotten girl every time she looked in the mirror. The shadow of a flame.


	2. if you must die, sweetheart, die knowing your life was my life's best part.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; You by Keaton Henson.

~~~~ New York, NY ~~~~

Kamilah wasn’t entirely sure how long she’d been sat on the shower floor, drunk and fully clothed with the warm water pouring down on her head. All around her empty orange pill bottles that had once contained Ambien and an array of antidepressants were scattered across the floor between the empty bottles of expensive wine she’d drained dry in her quest to feel something other than the agony that was eating away at her insides. She’d lost count of how many pills she’d taken by the handful or how many of Lily’s joints she’d smoked, all she knew was that there was enough illicit substances coursing through her body to kill at least ten mortals twice her size.

She’d never been one who’d had an arsenal of healthy coping mechanisms to indulge in when she was hurting. Her first instinct was always to hurt herself physically in a way that was more severe than the emotional hurt she was feeling, because she simply did not wish to deal with the pain. If she could focus on a physical feeling, the broken heart wouldn’t seem so bad— but nothing seemed to be working this time. It didn’t matter what she did, the pain would not leave her.

It seemed the whole world had fallen into a state of mourning after they’d announced Anastasia’s death. Even though they were trying to bring her back, that sort of miracle had never been achieved before as far as they knew and announcing to the world the true reason Anastasia was missing from the public eye was what she would’ve wanted.

It shouldn’t have angered her, she thought to herself, to see so many strangers mourning her loss. It reminded her of the year Anastasia had been born and Princess Diana had died. The floral tributes left by strangers outside of Raines Corp and Ahmanet Financial rivalled the ones that had been left outside Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace back in 1997, stretching for blocks around the city as mortals and creatures of the night all left their gifts of mourning.

The news seemed to be reporting on her death on loop. Playing highlights of her life, over and over again to the point that Anastasia Sayeed was now remembered as a saint, as one of those blessed souls who live forever in the shadow of the Gods. Or so the more religious mourners interviewed on the news segments told the world in floods of tears. In heaven, they said, the saints occupied a privileged place, living on the high platform of the Gods’ great hall where they spent their time singing the Gods’ praises. Forever. Just singing. 

It pissed her off that these mortal fools believed that would be an ecstatic existence, when she knew to her sweet Annie that would’ve seemed very dull after approximately thirty seconds. She’d had the attention span of a goldfish, after all, unless she’d been doing something she was very interested in— which had almost always either involved something with complex mathematical formulas that most people found torturous, or chains and leather with no in between. 

And it pissed her off even more that these mewling mortals who didn’t know her believed she would rise again of her own accord like she had last time. They all deserved their eyes gouged straight from their skulls and shoved down their throats for such spouting stupidity on national television.

Staring blankly ahead of her into the en-suite bathroom she’d shared with her wife for decades, she took a long drag out of the joint Lily had rolled for her. She didn’t even enjoy marijuana. She’d always found it to be far too sickening to be enjoyable and she appreciated neither the smell nor the headache she always seemed to get if she indulged in it... but she was desperate. 

Desperate to feel.

Desperate not to feel.

Just... desperate for something. 

Anything.

From her place on the shower floor she could hear her family in the living room, continuing to pour through Anastasia’s journals even after she’d excused herself to sob in private. They wouldn’t leave her alone, as they were too scared of what she’d potentially do to herself if she was given a window in which to do so.

She found it outrageously bold of them to assume they could stop her from offing herself, if that was what she desired to do— and it was what she would do if they couldn’t bring back Anastasia. This wasn’t a pain she could bear for the rest of forever. This loss... it was like her entire heart and soul had been torn from her chest.

It wasn’t made any easier by reading so many of her beloved’s private thoughts so soon after losing her either. At once it was sad, wonderful, and mysterious: when she read her most private thoughts and feelings, when she read what her Annie had written about even the most mundane days in her life, she was instantly alive again, whole and undamaged. With her words in her mind while she was reading, she was once again as real as she was. Gloriously daft, drop-dead charming, full of bookish nonsense and foul language, brave and generous. She was right there. At times deathly afraid and exhausted, alone, but fighting. Flying in silver moonlight in a plane that couldn’t be landed, stuck in the climb, far out of her reach — but alive.

She took another long drag of the joint in her hand and rested her aching head against the glass wall of the shower. Tears poured down both of her cheeks that she made no move to brush away and didn’t even notice at all.

How long had it been since she’d slept? She wondered.

How long since she’d fed?

She simply hadn’t the will to care for herself. To sustain her life when the light of it had been torn from her grasp and snuffed out. 

What was the point?

She hit her head against the glass lightly as a sob wracked through her body. “Why did you have to do this?,” she whimpered, her voice hoarse and tight as she whimpered into the steamy air that surrounded her. “Of all things. Why this?”

She couldn’t help but feel somewhat angry, both with Anastasia and the world for asking this of her. Deep down she knew it was the only way. That nothing anybody could’ve done could’ve prevented things from being the way they currently were. But what had she done to try to save herself from death? Nothing. She’d done nothing. She’d let fate decide, closing her eyes and giving herself up to the judgment of the universe, as she had done so many times before in the name of the greater good.

Love's madness was like a noose at her neck, swinging from ecstasy to bone-deep despair in one wild second.

Again, she hit her head. 

And again. 

And again. 

Suddenly she could barely breathe. She was always calm and stoic, yet now, in the face of the knowledge that she might never find her wife once again, never be able to tell her that she cared and that she loved her more than life itself, she couldn't breathe. Couldn't find a way to properly catch her breath.

“Did you honestly believe for one second that I could live without you?”

There was no reply, of course, and the silence was like a dagger to the heart. In her frustration she slammed her fist down at her side with such force she shattered the empty glass bottle laying on its side. She didn’t even flinch. Either she was so disconnected from everything that she couldn’t feel it, or the substances she’d been abusing for the past forty-eight hours were actually doing something of value.

Her dull eyes focused on her hand as blood began trickling out of the small wounds and dripping down her hand and onto her arm as she inspected the injuries, but she still didn’t react. She watched with rapt fascination as the blood trickled down to her elbow and began dripping onto the white tiles, staining them an angry crimson.

“Did I not make it perfectly clear that I wished to be left alone?,” she snapped as Serafine appeared in the bathroom door.

The psychic stopped in her tracks at the sight of her oldest friend, completely and utterly broken on the floor. If someone had told her only a century earlier that she’d ever see Kamilah Sayeed reduced to such a state, she’d have called them mad, as the Kamilah she’d known for close to 670 years simply didn’t show any emotion at all... never mind this much of it.

Whilst she had her own psychic abilities, they paled in comparison to the abilities Anastasia had boasted, but she somehow knew that the universe granted every soul a twin — a reflection of themselves; the kindred spirit — and no matter where they were or how far away they happened to be from each other — even if they were in different dimensions, they would always find one another. 

She knew that Anastasia was Kamilah’s twin flame. So much so that she actually struggled to remember a time when they weren’t together— Anastasia had really been that good for her. 

Anastasia had possessed the rare gift of being able to see Kamilah for who and what she really was. Serafine, herself, hadn’t developed that talent for many centuries. For at least two hundred years she’d been dreadfully intimidated by the stone-faced warrior queen who stood at the side of Gaius Augustine. But Anastasia had always been able to see the woman who kept herself isolated, so separate from the rest of the world. She had seen her for who she was, and she had loved her anyway... and that was something the ancient vampire had always needed.

In a way they reminded her of her own grandparents. She recalled from her mortal life how her grandfather had been so in love with her grandmother. They had been as inseparable as Anastasia and Kamilah. They detested being apart, as they had. Serafine may not have experienced that kind of real love for herself, but she had been given the privilege of seeing it twice. She felt it whenever she was with them. 

Her grandparents had died only three hours apart, and those three hours had been the most horrific of her grandfather’s life — and she hadn’t seen this sort of torment since that day all those centuries earlier. If a broken heart could kill a vampire as it could a mortal, she was certain Kamilah wouldn’t even have survived these two days without her... because her heart wasn’t merely broken. It was shattered.

The Bloodkeeper had been the ancient vampire’s destiny; her truest love. They had tied their lives together in a way that meant they would never tolerate being alone or being with anyone else. They belonged together, to each other, and had a bond for all the world to know... and it really was as simple as that.

“Your thoughts are very loud, mon amie,” breathed Serafine, tears now brimming at her own eyes as she picked up on the torturous thoughts radiating from Kamilah’s being in waves. Even just being close to her whilst she was in this much pain was exhausting on a psychic level in a way she’d never experienced. “I had to check on you.”

Kamilah took a long puff of her joint and then flicked it carelessly across the shower. “Thank you, but I’m fine. I’m—“ A sob left her lips of its own accord “Fine.”

Serafine tutted and strolled right into the shower beside her without care for her own clothing. She turned the water off at once and then crouched down at her side, gathering her into her arms and holding her there tightly.

Under normal circumstances Kamilah wouldn’t have dreamed of indulging in this much physical affection with anybody but her wife. A polite hug here and there was one thing but being embraced whilst she was sobbing to the point she felt like she couldn’t breathe was another— in fact, she wasn’t even entirely sure if she’d ever cried like this in front of anybody but Anastasia... but the tears simply wouldn’t stop.

She'd never had a breakdown of this intensity since thinking Anastasia’s Turning had failed. It was terrifying, to cry without the ability to stop it. Crying on Serafine like this should have been humiliating, but it was actually comforting.

“Let’s get you into some dry clothes,” Serafine murmured as she hauled her to her feet, having to practically carry her due to the amount of sedatives she’d consumed.

Kamilah simply nodded and allowed her to feel like she was helping. Mainly because she hadn’t the energy to yell or try to make her leave.

She’d never felt so lost.

So exhausted.

So alone.

“I should’ve done something to help her,” she murmured weakly as she staggered out of Serafine’s hold towards the walk-in closet she’d shared with Anastasia. Her wife’s possessions were all exactly where she’d left them and looked like she’d be back any moment to use them once again. Her shoes all neatly lined up on the shelves. Her work clothes pressed. Her pockets and purses still containing receipts and spare bits of change she’d left there.

“There was nothing you could’ve done,” Serafine assured her as she picked up the journal she’d had in her hand when she’d come to check on her. “You know the type of power Merlin had. There was nothing anybody could’ve done... but somebody just as divine.”

“Divine?,” she echoed, turning her back on Anastasia’s side of the closet. Just looking at her favourite dresses all hung up and waiting for her to slip back into them was another punch to the gut.

“There was... well, something that I found written in this journal from January 2nd 2011. When Anastasia would’ve been thirteen.”

She pulled a cream cable knit sweater over her head and then tossed Serafine a black t-shirt to change into since she’d gotten her own soaked walking into the shower to collect her. “Is it going to help bring her back?”

“I— possibly.” She smiled gratefully for the shirt and went about changing. “I don’t know exactly... but it certainly raises a number of questions that I think must be answered before we can figure out exactly what we have to do. Can I read it to you?”

“If you must,” she sighed.

Serafine cleared her throat and began to read. “I’m writing this on the plane going home to England, most people are sleeping but I can’t... the dreams have gotten too scary and I can’t make them stop. That’s why I’m writing at this hour. I need to stay awake.” She paused. “I never thought that I would ever be glad to be returning to school but after this visit to Almaty, the dorms are starting to seem more appealing in my mind than they actually are. I might hate the language I have to speak when I’m there and I might miss Kazakhstan a lot... but being away from that awful woman is a blessing in disguise. She seems to hate me more and more every time I have to go back to her house, and I don’t even know what I’ve done wrong— does she mean her mother?”

Kamilah nodded, her heart aching. “The woman’s Bloodkeeper visions drove her into insanity that was misdiagnosed as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder,” she explained. “She often drank to numb her pain and then took her frustrations out on Annie... as did her father.”

Serafine nodded and continued, “I only saw her like three times in the two weeks I was forced to go back to that house, but I heard her muttering to herself through the closed door of her study. It seems like everyday recently has been a Bad Day because her mumbling and pacing never stops. I don’t know when she sleeps or eats... and I’m not even sure whether I care if she does or doesn’t. It sounds bad, even looking at this written down makes me feel horrible, but why should I care whether the woman who beat me and locked me in a closet for over twenty-four hours takes care of herself—“

“She did what?,” Kamilah growled, rushing to Serafine’s side to inspect the words written onto the ruled paper in purple ink. Part of her hoped that she’d misheard... but she knew that she hadn’t. She knew that woman had actually had the audacity to lay a finger on her.

“I knew her mother was unfit for her role as caretaker but I never knew the extent of it,” Serafine breathed as she handed her the book. “Keep reading. I have a feeling this entry might just be important.”

“I was asked to watch over her when papa went to visit with relatives in Astana,” she read, steeling herself as her eyes scanned the neat Russian cursive and tried to decipher it as best she could. “He told me to make sure she took her pills and drank water, and to keep all the knives hidden away where she couldn’t find them, and I tried to do that but my hands shook the whole time. She’s very scary when she gets like this and she seems to hate me more for some reason.” She paused, her fingers tightening around the covers of the notebook to the point her knuckles turned white. “I tried to take her some medicine and a sandwich I made for her not long after papa left for Astana and made the mistake of going into her study instead of just waiting at the door. I should’ve known better. I triggered her by invading her personal space— Serafine, are you certain this is the right entry? Am I really about to hear my wife’s thirteen year old voice recounting an episode of abuse from her mother that she’ll likely blame herself for?”

“You are,” Serafine said apologetically, “but it is the right entry. Keep reading.”

She swallowed thickly and nodded only once as she sank down on the end of the bed. “She was on the floor scribbling in a strange language I don’t know. It didn’t look like Russian or any Kazakh scripts, and she doesn’t know any English, French, Mandarin, Spanish, or Japanese. I asked her what it was and she ignored me the first few times, like I was a ghost and she didn’t see or hear me at all... it hurt when she did that. Even though I don’t like her very much I envy people that know love. That have someone who takes them as they are. That have someone at home who actually sees them. It really is like I am invisible in their home. Always coming second to a glass bottle.” She wiped frantically at her eyes. “I asked her to take her pills again and she slapped them out of my hand and finally looked at me, but her eyes were glassy and she said a weird name I’ve never heard before. Phampira.”

Her eyes flickered up to Serafine, who was staring at the journal with rapt attention. “This is the first time any reference to Phampira has been made in her writings— keep going. There’s more.”

“I asked her who Phampira was and I think that was the worst thing I could’ve done,” she read, her stomach churning at the thought of having to read about anybody harming a hair on her head. “Her scribbling only got worse and then she said, ‘you ask a lot of questions for a dead girl’. I think she was threatening to kill me again... like the time she called me a changeling and locked me outside in the snow for so long my fingers went blue and papa had to take me to the doctor, but I was so frightened I couldn’t say anything and I just sat there as she said more things I don’t understand about me not being her real daughter— here,” she handed the book back to her, “you read it. I can’t bear it.”

Serafine gingerly took the notebook back and read, “Then she started saying weird things about ‘mortals’ and ‘devils’, like something right out of a horror movie. Things that most people don’t say in everyday conversations... at least not where I have to live in England. I don’t think I actually realised how much she was scaring me until I was safe in the closet with a door between me and her. I tried to tell myself that she was telling me these things because she wanted to spend time with me but fear masquerading as love can be an incredibly cheap emotion, I’ve realised. It’s lightly given, thought it didn’t seem so at that moment in time.”

Kamilah wiped at her eyes again with her sleeves. Were this anybody else’s writings she wouldn’t have found herself so deeply affected, but because this was her wife’s innermost thoughts, a window into her wife’s soul, and she felt crippled by her pain. The thirteen year old girl who’d written in the journal hadn’t enough life experience to know she was only trying to fill in the holes in her soul, the way the tide rushed sand to fill in the crevices of a rocky shore during a stormy night. She was trying to bandage her needs with what she declared was the love she deserved.

“I don’t remember exactly what I said that upset her so much,” Serafine continued, her voice wavering, “but whatever it was, it must’ve been very bad. She slapped my face and pulled my hair as she was dragging me over to the closet in her study. I tried to hit and kick her back and I think I might have bitten her hand and scratched her face, but she was too strong for me to run away from. I always seem to be much too weak to do anything of much use.” She wiped at her eyes. “Once she locked me up she told me that Phampira the one to blame for all of this. That I’m a demon in a body that was never mines to take, that I’m not really her daughter— but thats just stupid because I look like her, not some random stranger on the street.”

Kamilah blinked. “Not really her daughter?,” she echoed. “I— I don’t know why that strikes me at all. The woman was mad.”

“I banged on the door for a long time with my fists and bare feet but nothing happened,” Serafine continued. “I screamed but my voice quickly became hoarse and wheezy from what little dusty oxygen was available in the dark space. Through the cracks around the rim of the door I could see her as she sat back down and grabbed her notebook and started scribbling again. Eventually I figured out that all I could do was huddle on the floor and wait for papa to return from Astana to find me. I asked her how long she was planning to keep me in there and she said, ‘however long it takes for you to decide not to kill us all.’” 

She shuddered. Paranoia was a survival trait when you ran in circles as her mother-in-law had done. It had given her something to do in her spare time, coming up with solutions to ridiculous problems that weren’t ever going to happen outside of her own head. “Is that it?,” she muttered.

“There’s one more paragraph but—“

“But?”

“It might be a little too much for you to bear right now—“

“Read it.”

“Kamilah.”

“Read it,” she repeated.

Serafine sighed and looked down at the book. “I don’t know what I should do. Would anybody actually believe me this time if I’d to try asking for help again? Would it even be worth it when I only have to be at their house for the six weeks of summer, the two at Christmas, and then two at the end of March? Probably not. I have only four more years until I’m done with school and I can start living my own life... that is if she doesn’t snap and kill me before then. Nobody ever listens. It doesn’t matter how much I keep warning and warning, and nobody seems willing to listen when I say that woman is a danger to me. One of these days someone is going to wake up to the fact that I’ve been serious all along... I just hope that it will be long before I wind up in a body bag by this woman’s hand.”

Kamilah fell silent and her eyes drifted to a framed photograph of Anastasia taken at their wedding that was sat on the nightstand at her side of the bed. That smile could light up an entire room— she couldn’t comprehend how anybody could possibly hate her that much. How anybody could look at that face and wish to bring her harm.

Even just thinking about it, she learned for certain that there were many ways for a heart to break. Sometimes it would be from the crowding of life, the compression of responsibility and birthright and burden that just squeezed you until you couldn't breathe anymore. Even though your lungs were working just fine. And sometimes it would be from the casual cruelty of a fate that took you far from where you had thought you would end up... from where you wanted to be.

“She states clearly that her mother called her... a changeling,” Serafine said slowly. “She spoke about her not being her daughter and mentioned Phampira multiple times. I think those things may be connected.”

“I’m well aware of the rumours that my wife was Phampira in the flesh,” Kamilah said sharply, “but Anastasia herself called those ridiculous— she felt connected with the goddess on a level none of us could understand but I highly doubt she was her. If she was she would’ve survived assassinating Merlin. Her power wouldn’t have torn her apart.”

Serafine rubbed at her chin. “The mortals say that all legends have basis in fact...”

“The mortals also believed that two women loving each other was a sin punishable by death for centuries and allowed their white skinned men to make the world a miserable place for the rest of us for far too long. I wouldn’t trust a thing those imbeciles had to say about anything.”

“That is a very fair point,” she snorted. “However, what I meant was that her mother was also a Bloodkeeper. A mortal one, yes. A weak one, certainly. However, she was a Bloodkeeper all the same and whatever visions she had been experiencing will have been just as accurate as Anastasia’s were. Whatever it was she saw and couldn’t understand that lead to her making such horrible comments must’ve actually happened at some point—“

“You’re saying she must’ve had a genuine reason to believe Annie wasn’t her daughter?” Her brow furrowed. “That seems like an awfully big assumption to make, Serafine.”

“Has Anastasia ever had a vision that has been wrong?”

She swallowed thickly. “It— She— No.”

Serafine nodded. “She has had many a vision she has failed to understand and many that she required help in decoding... but she was never wrong about anything. She was always more adept at scrying into the past, but she occasionally knew what events would unfold long before they actually did... and they always did— did Anastasia keep any of her mother’s belongings after her death by any chance?”

“Their house in Almaty is as they left it,” Kamilah shrugged. “She hasn’t— She couldn’t ever bring herself to part with it, despite how miserable her parents made her. As far as I’m aware her mother’s study is filled with her possessions.”

“Her mother obviously kept notebooks, too. Anastasia tells us that much herself,” Serafine said, drumming her fingers against the pink cover of the diary. “I need to see if she’s written anything of value. Do you mind—“

“Tell Adrian to ready the jet,” she interjected. “We’ll take Annie’s notebooks with us— I think she left the house keys in the junk drawer in the kitchen.”

~~~~ Three Months Earlier - New York, NY ~~~~

Kamilah’s heels clicked viciously fast as she waltzed down the winding tunnel system that led to the ancient crypts buried beneath Central Park. One didn’t have to have psychic abilities to know everybody waiting in the main chamber was incredibly nervous, given the latest developments regarding The Order of Avalon and Merlin.

The council and clans of New York had been summoned to an immediate meeting and the councils from around the world were joining via video link. At this moment they’d decided against reaching out to any other supernatural communities... that would wait until it was absolutely necessary.

She kept her daggers drawn as Anastasia guided the way through the maze of passages in the upper levels of the what was essentially the West Wing of the vampire world — save for during the coldest nights of winter when their command centre was moved to the much warmer Raines Corp conference rooms.

Like the Shadow Den, the architecture was all curves of ancient stone, glass, and metal, slowly turning downward deeper underground. Glass was around every corner, showing breathtaking views of the crowded council chamber filled with councillors and clansmen careening to get a view of The Bloodkeeper as she waltzed quickly through their hallowed halls, the murky waterfall from the Conservatory Water trickling through the centre of the underground building, and the woods beyond through the well concealed skylights that mortals always seemed to miss. From this far below ground, looking up through the skylight Kamilah could see horrifying trees and the distant lights of skyscrapers framing the park rising in the distance, silhouetted against the night sky.

“I’m with you,” Kamilah breathed as they rounded the last corner before entering the council chamber. “No matter what. I’m with you.”

Anastasia paused and turned to caress her cheek. “Then I’m invincible.”

She leaned in and pressed a kiss to her brow, then leaned back with a smirk. She stared down into her eyes, holding her there like only she could, just with her dark gaze, mesmerising her. Keeping her captive, under her spell. A slow smile transformed the hard edges of her undeniably beautiful face as she took her in. Even now, after all this time, she was still so beautiful to her. A gorgeous woman and she was falling more and more in love with her everyday she spent at her side.

“Now go be the stone-cold bitch I’ve taught you to be,” she teased.

The Bloodkeeper snorted and playfully rolled her eyes before starting to walk again, the room falling silent the moment their footsteps began echoing into the cavernous chamber.

“Rise,” Adrian said from his seat at the front of the room as she and Anastasia made their entrance. 

The other councillors sat at the front of the room and the lower ranking clan members sat in the gallery all followed his command, with some people even dropping into a deep waisted bow as Anastasia breezed past them. She was the closest thing to a true queen that their society had ever had, and she was certainly revered as one who was equally feared as she was loved and respected by her people.

A pin could be heard in the council chambers as every eye in the room drifted towards the young Bloodkeeper as she sat on her gilded chair at the head of the room and Kamilah took her place sitting at her right side, a vision in an expensive black Haider Ackermann couture suit. 

She was the closest to her, ready to defend her at a moments notice. She couldn’t explain her urge to protect her wife from everything even remotely dangerous in the world if she tried. The woman was capable of tearing everyone in this room to pieces with a bored wave of her hand, yet Kamilah liked to think of herself as something of a bodyguard whilst surrounded by people she didn’t trust or like. 

The dominant animal that lived inside her ancient heart needed Anastasia near to her, within her protection, like she needed air in her lungs. It was older than time, this savage compulsion. If she’d been as savage as she was once, and not somewhat more mellow than she had been for the vast majority of her life, she would’ve already tucked her into her embrace, threw her daggers in a show of dominance, and impaled anyone who so much as looked at her the wrong way in a flurry of sparks and metal. But now she was much more civilised, so she simply pretended she didn’t want to maim them for looking too appreciatively at her beloved, keeping her close to her side.

For a few long moments Anastasia said nothing, and her silence made everybody squirm. To anyone else it might’ve looked like she was merely gathering her thoughts, but Kamilah knew better. She knew at that precise moment in time every single mind in the room was being peered into, searching for any signs of treachery before she opened her mouth.

The Bloodkeeper was an apparition in black velvet, her head held high as they all stared in awe at her. Kamilah didn’t know what true power felt like. But this was surely what it looked like, and she thought that she was beginning to understand why those ancient magical women the traditional Celtic folktales told of had to hide in caves. Why men wanted a queen to behave properly and predictably. It was not that they wanted to protect her; it was that they feared her.

It seemed borderline ridiculous that anybody should fear the woman that not even ten minutes earlier had been laughing hysterically at a nostalgic YouTube video from her childhood. The Gummy Bear Song, it had been called... and it had been bloody absurd. But Kamilah often had to realise that The Bloodkeeper and her Annie were two entirely different women. To preserve her sanity Anastasia hid herself away in these meetings and became only what people wanted her to be— the most important rule of any successful illusion, after all, was that the people must want to believe in it. The truth did not matter, it only mattered what people believed.

Bottom line, that was all a part of who Anastasia was. At times like this when the mortals couldn’t do something to protect their own citizens, or the supernatural world was facing a threat deemed too powerful to be taken down with a blade, it was her turn, and she had to harden her heart in order to do that. She had to become The Bloodkeeper and leave her own personal desires on the back burner. 

“It has recently come to my attention that the dark wizard, Merlin, has emerged from centuries of hiding,” Anastasia said, breaking the heavy silence that had fallen on the room.

A chorus of shocked gasps and horrified murmurs erupted at once, which were quickly silenced by a distinctly unamused clearing of her throat.

“As you are all aware, last night a dark mark appeared in the sky above City Hall. It was the mark of The Order of Avalon’s followers. A direct threat to the peace we have worked to achieve between the supernatural societies and mortal society,” Anastasia continued. “Now, we don’t yet know exactly what Merlin’s goal is. However, The Order of Avalon believed in the supremacy of supernatural beings and wanted to eradicate the world of the vast majority of mortals... so we can only imagine that whatever it is Merlin wants will lead to a lot of innocent mortal blood being spilled.”

“Where is he at the present moment, Bloodkeeper?,” Akeyo asked over the video link.

“I don’t know,” Anastasia breathed. “I’ve spent all day trying to track him... but he’s under some sort of cloaking spell that I can’t seem to see past—“

“What did I tell you about using that word?,” Kano huffed. He was the only one besides her that Anastasia would tolerate that sort of attitude from.

“You try to see through the spells of the world’s most powerful wizard,” Anastasia fired back at her mentor. “It’s not easy.”

“You will focus,” the child vampire told her defiantly, his steely gaze focused upon her over the video link. “It may not be easy but this is something that you are very much capable of. Now focus.”

Anastasia snorted. “You want me to close my eyes and perform a magic show in the middle of a council meeting?”

Kano nodded and folded his little hands on the conference table he was sat at. “You will work until I decide you have given enough.”

“To what end?,” Anastasia asked him, rolling her eyes, the irritation and mental exhaustion dragging her down into an inescapable fatigue. “You want me to go into a trance for you, only so I can make a spectacle of my talents?” 

“I wish you to become who and what you were born to be.” He levelled her with that stare that was nowhere near as intimidating as he believed it to be. If you can master this, that look seemed to say, then you can master whatever else this wicked world might bring your way. “Now stop sulking,” he continued. “You will try until you succeed. Again.”

Anastasia huffed, but closed her eyes after flipping the bird at the camera. 

The room fell silent and everybody sat forwards in their chairs, desperate to see her in action. So much of her abilities were still a mystery to most people and Kamilah had heard absurd rumours that she could do everything from turning objects to solid gold with a single touch, to time travelling.

“Tell me what you see,” Kano instructed. “Focus, dear girl. You. Can. Do. This.”

Anastasia exhaled a shuddered breath and the room filled up with the very familiar static energy of her abilities. Those who hadn’t felt it before audibly gasped, their eyes widening to the point they were practically bulging from their skulls.

A shimmering red aura suddenly erupted from Anastasia’s skin and even Kamilah gasped as the entire room was engulfed in a gentle crimson light. That had never happened before. 

Her heartbeat thundered as she twisted in her seat and reached out to rest a hand on her wife’s thigh, ready to shake her out of the trance at a moments notice should she seem like she required rescuing. It was one of the most sublimely exhilarating moments of her life, seeing whatever this was unfolding. She seemed like she was half a step in front of the real, an inch or two beyond the confines of her body. Almost like she wasn't occupying space anymore so much as melting into it. What was around her was also inside her, and she had only to look into herself in order to see the world.

“I’m in a burning wood and I see him in every shadow of every tree, a ghost standing tall against the rainstorm at the entrance of a cave,” Anastasia said, her voice distant and emotionless.

“Very good,” Kano breathed, leaning forwards in his seat. “Keep going. Let the power wash over you, do not fight it. Let yourself fall into it. Tell us what you see.”

Anastasia took a deep breath and swallowed thickly. “Water is streaming down his face, into his eyes and mouth, into his collar, into the abyss that was once his heart. Everything is— red. Everything is red, the rain is turning from water to blood.” 

“Whose blood?,” Kano pressed.

“I— don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. You are vampire. Be a vampire,” Kano said. “Whose blood is it?”

“Kano— I don’t know—“

“Again,” he said. “Look again.”

“I don’t—“

“Whose blood is it, Anastasia?,” he pressed, completely unyieldingly. It might’ve seemed harsh to some, but was the sort of guidance Anastasia needed and responded to when she began to doubt herself.

“My blood,” she muttered eventually. “He’s opening his mouth to taste it... and he’s telling me that it’s only a matter of time for us both.”

“A matter of time?,” Kamilah echoed. “Until what?”

“He... won’t show me—“ She shuddered, clutching at her head. “I can’t—“

“What do you know about the wood?,” Kano interjected. “If he will not elaborate focus on your surroundings. Focus on the wood.”

Anastasia’s brow furrowed and beads of sweat trickled down her forehead. Kamilah regarded her wife for a very long moment, poised to bring her back because she looked quite distressed... but something told her that to do so was unwise, so she refrained. Her chocolate-brown eyes held mere curiosity as she watched as Anastasia searched for whatever it was that she was actually searching for... and it would’ve looked to most that for a long moment she was merely thinking, but Kamilah knew better. She was remembering.

“It seems familiar... very familiar. Like something from a long forgotten dream or something,” Anastasia said, her white-knuckled grip tightening on the arms of her chair. “The goddess Phampira was patron of blood and life... and before she began her creation of the supernatural creatures that roam the world today, this wood was cloaked in ancient magic,” she said softly, but not meekly. 

How the hell did she know this?

Everybody waited for her to continue, but apparently she had said enough as she was silent for a long time.

“And?,” Kano prodded. 

“And that’s all I know,” Anastasia said, meeting his gaze as she emerged from her trance almost defiantly. She slumped back against her chair, her chest heaving and her muscles quivering as she collected herself.

Disappointed at the lack of anything further to question her about, Kano sighed. 

She had lied, and everybody who knew her knew it. 

Kamilah met her gaze as she wiped the sweat from her forehead and she saw the truth shining in her eyes. Deep down she somehow knew plenty about this wood, knew that the denizens of the place had once been more supernatural creatures than anyone could count or remember. All ruled by their larger, more powerful cousins, the immortal gods and goddesses — the original inhabitants and settlers of the wood, and the oldest beings in existence.

But where were they now? She wondered. 

She leaned into her wife, her mouth against her ear. "Breathe for me, Annie. Just breathe— no more psychic stuff today, please. Your head is hurting.”

“I'm in pain all the time, Kami,” she whispered, “and if I gave into it then I'd do nothing.”

Kamilah sighed and kissed her temple. “Rest. We need you at full strength if we are to stop whatever Merlin is plotting.”

“There you go, getting all protective on me. You're worried about me, aren't you?,” Anastasia breathed.

“One of us has to worry about you, foolish girl,” her voice practically purred at her, a sensual mixture of possession, desire and something else — affection. Her white teeth flashed at her and her face softened so that she almost looked jolly. That smile was reserved for her alone and it was full-blown, wide, bright and heart-stopping in its joy. “Because we both know you’re not going to be the one to do it.”

“I feel like I’ve been there before... but I don’t know exactly where it is or when I was there,” she said after a moment, casting her a bewildered glance.

A small smile tugged at the corners of Kano’s lips. “Interesting, isn’t it?”

“Why is it interesting?,” Kamilah demanded.

“Anastasia knows why,” he said simply.

All eyes fell on Anastasia and her brow furrowed. “I do?”

Kano nodded. “You do.”

She sighed. “And you’re not in the mood to give me any hints? Or, I don’t know, just tell me for once instead of teaching me a lesson?”

“Believe it or not, I don’t know exactly why... but I have my suspicions,” he replied after a long moment.

“And they are?,” Serafine asked impatiently.

“My own.” He sighed. “The Bloodkeeper will discover more in time, only when she is ready to do so. It is a path to self discovery that she must walk and walk alone.”

“You told me once I’d appreciate your cryptic bullshit when I grew older,” Anastasia frowned, “but I’m older and I still don’t appreciate it anymore than I did when I was twenty-two and struggling to learn the basics.”

Kano chuckled. “All I know is that these trials ahead aren't about revenge, my friend. They're about justice. What happens to you, is what you will make happen. You will grow, you will be our sword, you will be our shield, and you will use what you have learned in this life to make good or bad.”

“Justice,” Anastasia echoed.

“The Bloodkeeper will fight injustice with justice,” somebody in the crowd said, far too self assuredly. “Like she did with Rheya!”

Anastasia swallowed thickly and shook her head. “Killing Rheya was a mercy,” she replied dismissively without elaborating. “Sometimes... it’s best to fight injustice with an act of mercy...”

“Are we going to war?,” a low ranking new Turn of Clan Raines asked excitedly. “Like the old days when you fought Gaius Augustine and Rheya?”

Kamilah glared at the imbecile and if her look could’ve killed him, he’d have dropped dead at that very moment. Her brother had once told her to beware the men who loved battle. Lysimachus had told her upon returning from war for the very first time that only one man in three, or perhaps one man in four, was a real warrior beneath all their finery and the rest were simply reluctant fighters with no choices. But what she had learned fighting her own wars was that only one man in twenty was a true lover of battle. Such bloodthirsty men were the most dangerous creatures upon every battlefield, the most skillful, the ones who reaped the souls of their enemies, and the ones to fear.

“Only a fool wants war,” Anastasia said abruptly, the gears in her powerful mind turning as her eyes bore into the boy, “but once a war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly. I will do everything I can to avoid a fight but... if it comes down to it in the end, this war cannot be fought with regret, but must be waged with a savage joy in defeating the enemy, and it is that savage joy that inspires us to write our greatest songs about love and war.”

“Are you going to go looking for him?,” someone else asked.

“If I can figure out an exact location, yes. Until then, the council will make a plan of action and figure out how keep ourselves and the mortals safe. Enemies always come soon enough,” Anastasia told the woman, “you don't always need to seek them out.”

“What would be the point in war?,” Mathew asked from his seat beside his husband in the front row. Having never actually had to defend Clan Sayeed before, he looked rather nervous beneath the winged eyeliner he was wearing.

Smart man, she thought.

“The point?,” Anastasia echoed.

“Why do we fight?,” he asked. 

Anastasia regarded him for a long moment before replying, “because we were born.”

Kamilah’s brow furrowed as Anastasia’s eyes locked onto Kano and something unspoken passed between teacher and student. Something imperceptible to anyone else... something others could only guess at.

Something she wasn’t sure she even wished to guess at.

War was always fought in a certain degree of mystery. The truth could take days to travel, and ahead of truth flew rumour, and it was always hard to know exactly what was really happening, and the art of it was to pluck the clean bone of fact from the rotting flesh of fear and lies and guesswork.

Her wife would do whatever was necessary to win, but it had to be the right thing, no mistakes. Duty before heart, always, no matter what was at stake. Even when what she was doing was very, very dangerous. It wasn’t a truth that most people realised or wanted to consider when they looked at the most powerful vampire in the world, and that truth was that she often had no choice... reluctant fighter that she was.

The power she had was a funny thing. A thing that was not as thrilling and exciting as most people liked to believe.

Anastasia had tried to explain it to her before... but it was one of those things that words simply would never be able to do justice. She’d told her that it was a strange thing to be her, as that feeling of freedom and unlimited potential her powers gave her, also bound her to something infinitely bigger than herself. As if by tying her and binding her tightly in its grasp, it released her spirit — beaten down as it was at times, so encased in the beliefs of others, what was right, what was wrong, what she was, what she ought to be — so that she could just be. Simply be.

It was oddly similar to something Merlin had once said about fate and destiny. Fate, as Merlin had always taught them during their days in The Order, was an inexorable thing. Life was a jest of the Gods and nothing more, Merlin had liked to claim over a pint of beer, and there was no such thing as justice in the world. You must learn to laugh, he had once told her, or else you'll just weep yourself to death.

“Sacrifices will have to be made,” Anastasia said softly, “and we must make them. No matter what is asked of us... we must.”

Kamilah’s breath caught in the back of her throat as those words rang out in her head. Ricocheting throughout her mind over and over again. A leader leads, Anastasia had told them before entering the opera house all those years ago, and you can’t ask anyone to risk death if you’re not willing to risk it yourself.

In her life she had come to the conclusion it was not actually all that difficult to be a lord, a lady, or even a queen, but it was incredibly difficult to be a true leader.

Most people, be they mortal or vampire, wanted to follow, and what they demanded of their figurehead was prosperity. Their figurehead and those who retained them were the gift-givers and the overseers of their affairs, but that by itself was not enough. People, by nature, had to be led.

Leave people to their own devices for days at a time and they’d eventually get bored, and bored vampires made trouble. Every clan leader knew that their underlings must be instilled with a sense of duty to the community. They must be surprised and challenged, and routinely given tasks they thought far beyond their abilities. And they must have a healthy dose of fear. 

A leader who was not feared on some level would cease to rule and taken advantage of, but fear alone was not enough. They must be well loved, too. When an underling has been led into battle, when an enemy as powerful and merciless as Merlin was roaring defiance, when the blades of sharpened daggers were clashing and spells flying, when the earth itself was about to be stained crimson with blood and the air filled with the chorus of the dying, then an underling who loved their leader would fight better than one who merely feared their leader. When that moment came in battle, all were brothers in arms, they fought for each other, and an underling must know that their leader would sacrifice their own life to save any one of their followers.

After following a man who was simply feared for more than two thousand years, Kamilah had learned all of that from her wife. From the woman who led with joy in her sweet soul and didn’t hesitate to show the kindness in her heart, though she was feared too. She was unpredictable and breathtakingly powerful.

Their enemy, Merlin, knew only how to lead by fear, and Gaius had been the very same. Men who led by fear could become great kings of their people and could come to cast their reign in lands so great that no one knew their boundaries, but they could be beaten too.

They could be beaten much easier than they liked to believe, regardless of how powerful they thought themselves.

They could be beaten by those who fought as brothers.

~~~~ 2020 - New York, NY ~~~~

“I’ve heard scarabs symbolise rebirth,” Adrian’s newest mortal assistant said. “Or they used to, a long time ago. I’m not sure many people appreciate them these days.”

Kamilah went absolutely still as she inspected the gift that Adrian had bought her. That voice. It was... familiar. Very familiar. The pitch was extraordinarily sweet... the accent unique to the point that she couldn’t place it. That tone pushed into her chest, right into her centre, as if it were a key unlocking something tight and hard in her. 

Clearing her throat, she looked up and truly regarded the young mortal that had spoken for the first time... and her breath practically arrested. She’d seen this woman before. Many times before in her dreams but never whilst she was awake. 

How hadn’t she noticed it earlier whilst she’d been busy randomly opening and closing applications on her phone to appear too occupied to make casual conversation?

The day had dawned perfectly bright and clear, which should’ve been her first inclination that it would be anything other than ordinary. Blue skies, she found, were often dreadfully misleading.

Every day was ordinary, until it wasn’t.

Her breath left her lungs in a sharp rush of utter shock and bewilderment. Something tight in her chest loosened considerably. Someplace... vulnerable. Someplace guarded and protected. For a long moment she couldn’t seem to remember how words worked and she simply regarded the mortal woman, feeling as if that voice had somehow been a key, fitting perfectly into the lock and turning it before she had a chance to react or run away.

Something seemed to pass over her as she met her glacial blue eyes for the first time. Something electric. Something so utterly bizarre that it frightened her.

For the first time in her life she had the urge to turn around and flee. She knew danger when she saw it, and this woman was pure danger. She had to be. Why else would she be feeling... whatever the hell it was that she was suddenly feeling after so long of a suffocating sense of nothingness?

What was this sorcery?

“You... know your history?,” she said slowly, her eyes never leaving the young woman.

Her dark eyes bore into her, searching for... something. How was it possible to have dreamt of this mortal for so many centuries? What was she? 

This was an hour, a minute — and Kamilah would remember it forever — when she knew instinctively on the basis of the most inconsequential evidence, that something was so right that it actually felt wrong in its newness. She didn’t know — couldn’t know — that it was the first of a series of ‘wrongful’ events that would culminate in the utter devastation of her lonely life as she had known it.

She shrugged. “I mean, I know a little. I find it all fascinating.”

A small smile twitched at the corners of her lips before she could stop it and she quickly looked away, closing the velvet lid on the black jewellery box containing the scarab brooch she’d been given. She moved her hand over her heart as an unknown emotion seized it hard, wrenching, twisting, forcing that lock to open so that her own music could be heard pounding in her ear, beating like a lost drum seeking the right rhythm.

“As do I,” she mused, drumming her fingers against the marble tabletop. “I have a... special appreciation for rare ancient Egyptian artefacts like this one. A collector of them, if you will.”

Was that too much? She wondered. Was that something a mortal would say whilst discussing their interests with another mortal? It had been so long since she’d actually cared about appearing mortal she was quite certain she may as well have just waltzed into this meeting with her fangs out like some sort of savage.

The woman smiled softly, her eyes twinkling in the light and her mortal heart beating steadily in her ears. “I’m the same way with old Russian artefacts... like, from before they became communists,” she smiled. “They make me feel closer to my ancestors.”

“You’re from Russia?,” she asked.

She shook her head. “Kazakhstan. My family is Russian, though.”

She hummed softly and tried not to react too much after centuries of wondering what her accent was. The last thing she wished was to scare this woman off of to appear too enraptured by her after just meeting her. “Very nice.”

“That’ll be all, Anastasia,” Adrian smiled at the girl.

Anastasia. 

Pretty name, she thought to herself.

Anastasia nodded. “If you need anything else just let me know.”

“I will,” he beamed as he began to usher her out of the room.

The girl glanced back at her before crossing the threshold. Their eyes met for only a fraction of a second, but in that moment she knew this woman could shatter her if she allowed her close enough. Break her into a million pieces and she'd never recover. Not in this lifetime. 

She knew next to nothing about this woman, save for her name. But for centuries she had been dreaming of her in times of strife. For centuries she’d seen that face and been given the same instructions over and over again: find me.

Who was she, really?

Did she look at her and feel any recollection at all after spending centuries haunting her dreams?

Kamilah’s dark eyes bore into her back through the glass wall Adrian had installed in the conference room to make it seem lighter and airier. She studied the way the light glistened in her long coppery hair and had the feeling if she reached out to touch her, she would come away with her fingers scorched. That hair, blazing in the light... she'd never seen anything like it. The colour of burning embers and flickering flames, with glimmers of copper and gold dancing amid the half-pinned-up locks. Her skin was an unusually flawless ivory for a redhead with almost no freckles to be seen despite the fact that she wasn’t wearing too much makeup, but there was the odd very faint one littered on her cheeks like a finishing spice on some luxurious dessert.

She was old enough to sense that she had the air of someone who hadn’t been nurtured: and had compensated for that by becoming extremely educated and very well dressed. As someone who hadn’t always been lovingly sheltered, it was an aura she’d recognise anywhere. It was in the shadows that lingered in her glacial gaze... the knowledge that there were some things no human being could be protected from.

God, those blue eyes, Kamilah thought to herself as she brought herself to look back down at the jewellery box clutched in her hands, with silvery striations like the rays of tiny stars.

Whatever this was, it was utter madness. 

She was Kamilah Sayeed. She did not feel things.

The audacity of whatever forces were at play here was just astounding.

“Are you quite alright?,” Adrian whispered. “You’re looking rather flushed.”

“Brother, do not be absurd,” she huffed.

“Where did you find her?,” Cecil smirked. “Despite her attitude, she’s easier on the eyes than the other trollops you had working for you, I’ll give you that much.”

Adrian sighed. “She’s highly qualified to the point she may actually be smarter than me and is really very pleasant company. Her looks have nothing to do with her position here at Raines Corp, I assure you.”

“Your last assistant lasted three days before being killed,” snorted Cecil. “I give her two. She may be plucky but she’s scrawny. Care to make a bet, Kamilah?”

Kamilah scowled at The Baron with a look that would send most people fleeing for their lives. Something about what he had just said not only angered her... it enraged her. Why should she care about what happened to some mewling mortal?

“That is quite enough, Cecil,” she snapped. “Have some class.”

She looked back through the glass wall at the girl and focused on her voice. She was engrossed in a conversation with one of her new colleagues about whatever novel one of them was currently reading... both of them laughing and talking like they’d known one another for years.

Her mouth seemed to go dry at the sight of seeing her in the flesh, right before her very eyes. Were it not for Adrian and Cecil’s comments she would’ve simply tried to dismiss everything she was thinking and feeling down to a sudden descent into madness.

She was more than two thousand years old, after all. It was high time she went senile, she decided.

Even as the meeting wore on, she couldn’t help but steal glances at Anastasia as she was sat at her desk working. She realised all the lore in her ancient family history was absolute truth. Perhaps Cleopatra hadn’t been as stupid as she’d once thought... doing everything she had done to Egypt for another person. Ptolemaic women. When they found the right person, felt drawn to them with everything in them... they did it only once. 

Some would’ve said it was far too soon to know for certain... but Kamilah knew. She was old enough to know both herself and the way the world worked. She’d spent long enough chasing this woman through a garden in her dreams to know the moment she’d looked into those big blue eyes— to have peered into those eyes and suddenly known with all her soul that life would be an impossible thing without her. Know that her voice could somehow already make her heart miss a beat and that her company could potentially be all her happiness would ever desire if she found the courage to pursue her... and to somehow know that her absence would leave her soul alone, bereft and lost.

She knew.

Anastasia was her once.


	3. all of these stars will guide us home.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; All Of The Stars (Acoustic) by Glenn & Ronan.
> 
> TW: Sexual assault references at the end of the second section/in the third section.

~~~~ Almaty, Kazakhstan ~~~~

“Who the hell let this fool drive?,” Kamilah snarled from the passenger seat of the rental car they’d arranged to meet them at the airport.

“Certainly not me—“

Multiple screams erupted as Serafine’s words cut out, because the brake pedal of the Range Rover randomly slammed on as if there was a phantom foot on it. Lily Spencer may have claimed to be the best driver amongst them, but it was abundantly clear she was actually the worst... and that was saying something considering Adrian was the only one not liable to get himself arrested for a road rage attack whilst behind the wheel.

“Anastasia really wasn’t shitting me when she said the drivers here were like how she was playing The Simpsons Hit and Run on crack,” Lily snorted as her hands tightly gripped the steering wheel. “What even are the rules of the road in this place? It’s fucking lawless—“

“Keep your eyes on the road, you imbecile!,” Kamilah interjected as she whacked her over the head with the diary she’d been devouring since leaving New York. “If you get me into a car crash, I will not be amused or in any way pleased.”

“Y’all are fucking dramatic as shit—“

She cut off as she slammed the break pedal once again, and Adrian and Serafine braced themselves against the backs of the front seats. Kamilah, however, was doing her utmost to intimidate her protégé into driving like a responsible adult... even though her heart was fluttering in her chest as the Range Rover’s back end skittered sideways in a stomach-churning sensation. 

“Perhaps I should drive,” Adrian suggested, breathlessly.

“I’m, by some miracle, the one who has had the least to drink in the past forty-eight hours— and thats saying something, cause ya girl is fucked up,” Lily commented. “If a cop shows up and tells you to blow him, we’re fucking done for.”

“Blow him?,” Serafine echoed. “I do not think that is standard practice during traffic stops.”

“Yeah it is,” huffed Lily. “The machine thing you blow—“

“A breathalyser,” Adrian snorted.

“Exactly.” Lily moved to try and look over her shoulder at him, but Kamilah quickly reached out and pushed her face back to the front window of the car. “Goddamn, Sayeed—“

“Eyes. On. The. Road,” she snarled. “Lily Spencer, I will not say it again.”

Adrian and Serafine both started snickering in the backseat, all of them bracing against their windows as Lily rounded a corner at breakneck speed.

Her eyes felt like they couldn’t possibly get any wider, and she had no idea if she was clenching her teeth or if her jaw was slack. However, she definitely knew her ass was clenched, as the car completely slung around twice, miraculously not flipping as they turned into the area of town where Anastasia’s parents had lived.

Being back in Kazakhstan without Anastasia was like another dagger twisting in her heart, as they’d spent a great many vacations exploring the country together. Whilst they’d rarely ever seen the family members who’d lived here when they visited, it had made Anastasia incredibly happy to introduce her to her home and her culture... and to rediscover much of it for herself after living in The West for so long.

In fact... she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen her wife more content or stimulated by conversation than when she was able to speak in her native tongue. Than when she didn’t have to translate every single thing that was going on around her and could just focus entirely on the conversation without weighing each one of her words to ensure they made sense when she spoke. It was something that she, herself, had known well once... and it was more exhausting than most people realised.

“It is quite a beautiful city, isn’t it?,” Serafine murmured.

“Indeed... besides New York, Almaty was her favourite place in the world,” Kamilah sighed, brushing her thumbs across the sides of the urn she’d refused to let out of her sight since sweeping her wife’s ashes into it. She knew it was probably unhealthy to be carrying it everywhere with her and to have warned everybody against touching it under the threat of being stabbed in the eyes... but the mere idea of not protecting her, even now, made her nauseous.

Conversation passed between the others as they drove on through the wealthy suburban area where Anastasia’s parents home stood on a secluded patch of woodland in the mountainous foothills that surrounded the city. She hadn’t the will or the energy to do much speaking, though.

Despite the fact she was technically safer than she’d been in a while, surrounded by the people she loved most, she’d never wanted to cry more. For them, she managed to hold back. She curled inward and bled alone, inside, where she though no one else could see — even though everybody was only too aware of exactly what was going through her mind at any given moment.

She remained silent even when they finally emerged from the thick woodland at the end of the long, winding driveway that stood before the imposing mansion that Anastasia’s great grandfather had designed as an exact replica of the Yusupov family’s Arkhangelskoye Palace in Moscow Oblast. Adrian, Serafine, and Lily all gasped at the sight of it... and it was a reaction she understood perfectly well. She’d been rather amazed by the ornate victorian beauty the first time she’d seen it.

“This is just... sitting here empty,” Lily breathed whilst turning the car engine off. “Y’all really just have a whole ass palace sitting here.”

“We were planning to renovate it and turn it into a vacation home,” she muttered below her breath as she got out of the car, slamming the door behind her. “We thought it could be a nice place to spend the Dark Solstice as a family...”

For a long moment she simply stood and stared at the old house. Anastasia had told her how miserable she’d been here despite the wealth and privilege she’d been absorbed in, but after reading through so many of here diaries and hearing her describing almost each and every day of her lonely childhood in real time... it was an awful feeling to now be staring the place it had all happened in the face.

Up above, the stars seemed to shine brighter than they did in New York. Strange, Kamilah thought, how in Egypt her people had always thought there was an answer to all life's mysteries in the stars, yet whenever she stared at them the answers slipped out of her grasp. She had to think now, and she stared at the blazing stars in the hope that they would help her somehow, but all they did was go on shining. 

Indifferent to her suffering.

She drifted down the driveway towards the house carelessly for a moment, stunned by the night. The moon had come out, and though not dramatically full or a perfect crescent, its three quarters were bright enough to turn the light fog and dew of the night and all that had the power to shimmer a bright silver, and everything else — the tarnished metal of the lamp posts that lined the imposing drive, the gates, the cracks in the cobbles — a velvety black.

The woods surrounding the once impeccably landscaped gardens definitely seemed thicker than she recalled them being when she was here last. At certain points you could no longer see the sky at all because of the ancient tall trees that stretched far overhead. Pines and other shaggy-barked species shot a hundred feet straight up on massive trunks, some of which were as thick around as a small house. The canopies that spread out at their tops blocked out most of the moon; only a rare dappled shaft made it through. But it didn't feel claustrophobic. The absence of light at some places kept the underbrush low: moss on ancient fallen logs, puddles of shade flowers, mushrooms and tiny lilies. It was airy and endless like the largest cathedral ever imagined.

She stood still, as still as she possibly could and listened to the quiet, to the stillness, absorbing the strange beauty of this familiar place, before steeling herself to unlock the front door. The truth was, she hadn’t actually realised how similar her and Anastasia’s mortal lives were until reading her diaries — besides the fact they were both connected to royalty, she hadn’t truly considered how similar their lives were until now, and this place now reminded her only too much of her own days spent in Antirhodos. 

Even though the Romanov Dynasty had ended before Anastasia’s ancestors had fled to Kazakhstan, it seemed her relatives had preserved the twisted sense of family royals had had since the beginning of time. She remembered it well. Even in Egypt royalty had barely looked at each other, and they never smiled out of a bone-deep fear that their smiles would be construed as some sort of conspiracy against the crown. Kamilah recalled her own wealthy cousins always looking bored feeding their exotic pets imported from strange lands, and the merchants in Alexandria had not even attempted haggle with them on the rare occasion they were allowed to leave the palace. 

Her memories of her own life were similar to something Anastasia had written at the age of sixteen on a visit home during her summer vacation. How she’d said that only her parent’s staff had looked alive here, darting around the slow-moving men and women born into a more privileged life. How despite the heat of Southern Kazakhstan in the summertime, the sun, the bright artwork everywhere, she had never seen a place as cold as the gilded cage she was supposed to call her home. 

“Kristina’s study is down the hall, third door on the left,” she said, breaking the silence as they gathered in the ornate marble foyer. Little particles of dust danced in the air in front of their faces, skirting over old furniture draped in ghostly white sheets, glistening like tiny snowflakes in the silvery moonbeams that shone through the windows. “It—“

“Is that her?,” Adrian breathed, cutting her off and drawing her attention to a large painting that was hung on the wall above the ornate fireplace on the right side of the entryway. An incredibly ostentatious painting of Anastasia, her mother, and her father wearing traditional Imperial Russian court attire and looking like the happiest family in the world graced the wall.

Kristina, Anastasia’s mother, was wearing a royal blue court dress and diamond tiara. She looked somewhat like Anastasia, with the same thin, small body, the same fiery hair, and the same nose and the same shaped eyes as her daughter. Only her mother’s eyes were green instead of blue with a kind of cruelty deep inside them. It was not a soft face like Anastasia’s was. She was a woman of strong lines and high bones, and that made for a good face and a beautiful one, but hard, so hard. 

Alexei, her father, stood tall on the left hand side of the portrait. He was clad in an old Russian military uniform with red orders draped across his chest, that she naturally assumed was somehow relevant to the Yusupov family. What made him enrapturing was the bright blue eyes and his posture, for he stood as straight as spear and his long raven hair was neatly slicked back and framed his incredibly sharp face.

Anastasia was stood in between her parents, no more than eight or nine years old, wearing a lighter blue court dress and matching kokoshnik with a dark red bow at the back that matched the orders draped across her body to match her father. Her shoulder length ginger hair framed her doll-like face and softened the sadness in her eyes that the painter had somehow captured perfectly. 

Kamilah swallowed thickly as she stared at the portrait, at those familiar eyes boring right into her... even seeing them in paint snared her like a salmon caught in a basket trap. “Yes,” she whispered. “That’s her.”

“It appears that even then she had the poise and grace of a queen,” Serafine breathed.

She smiled sadly. It was indeed a very true statement, as the little girl in the portrait stood straight and stoic as a queen. There may have been many enrapturing people in the world, many who’d been born and died after changing it, but Kamilah doubted there had been many more so unforgettable as Anastasia, the last Bloodkeeper and heir of the Yusupov family, the end of two very ancient bloodlines.

‘And it would have been better,’ a voice in Kamilah’s head muttered, ‘had she been drowned at birth.’

She whirled around frantically, looking for the source of the voice... but all she saw was her family looking at her like she’d gone mad.

“Kamilah?,” Adrian said gently.

“You... didn’t hear it?,” she stammered. She sounded pathetic and she knew it the moment the words had left her mouth, but she had been driven to this humiliation by love. A woman could do that. They had that power.

“Hear what?,” Lily pressed.

“The voice...”

Everybody exchanged confused glances and Serafine reached out to caress her shoulder. She took a slow look around her at the people who may as well have been her siblings. All of them stood as still as statues. Beautiful, gorgeous specimens of human beings, tough and dangerous, waiting for her orders, completely prepared to protect her at any cost and do whatever she asked of them— and all of them worried.

“It has been days since you’ve slept, mon amie,” she said slowly, “it is not uncommon to start having auditory hallucinations after a number of days with no sleep.”

She sighed and nodded, clutching the urn in her arms tighter against her chest. Tired. She was simply tired.

“You’ve also smoked a couple of hundred dollars worth of pot the last few days,” Lily added, her tone gentler than one would usually expect from her. “I know you don’t think it effects you but there’s a fairly good chance you’re tripping without realising it.”

Tripping.

She was Kamilah Sayeed. She did not do something as undignified as ‘trip’. 

“Come,” she muttered, not seeing any point in even trying to rebuttal that with anything. If they wanted to think her high, she was perfectly alright with that. Truth, after all, was ever feeble against passionate falsehood. “The less time we spend here the better. I see her everywhere and I’m already struggling to bear it.”

She cuddled the urn tighter to her chest as she led the way to Kristina’s study, the heels of her boots echoing on the dusty marble floors.

She missed Anastasia. Really missed her. It was strange to think of a woman night and day, to worry about her and look forward to being with her... when there were no real guarantees she’d ever see her again. To want to inhale the scent of her and know she was home. To crave her body like an addiction and need the sound of her laughter and sight of her smile. 

Who knew there were women like her in the world? She had made it exciting to wake up in the morning. She looked forward to the day. To their shared laughter. Their conversations. The intense attraction between them. Who wouldn't fall in love with her?

In her whole life she’d never had that before with anyone else and now everything about being with Anastasia seemed as natural to her as breathing. She’d let her in— and she didn’t do that. She didn’t let anybody in... and the one time she did, she’d lost her.

Not having her was an incredibly painful adjustment to have to try and make.

The mahogany wood door creaked loudly as she pushed it open to reveal yet another well-worn room that had been long since abandoned. The shelves that lined the walls were still crowded with heavy looking hardback novels printed in Russian. Beneath the white sheets over the furniture, cushions still lined the leather couch and armchairs in front of the fireplace. An antique writing desk stood in front of the window, it’s drawers still full of stationary and mail that had been laying unopened for decades. 

“I’d imagine Kristina’s writings are either in the desk or the closet,” she said, her eyes locking onto the space that her wife had once been confined in against her will at the far end of the room. “The books on the shelves are all novels.”

Adrian pulled the white sheet off of the desk and a cloud of dust choked him. He wheezed like he was breathing his last for a good long moment but shut up the moment he realised there was something rested right on top of the table. 

“It’s a postcard from Bournemouth,” he said, his voice hoarsened from his coughing fit, as he picked it up to show them all the picture of an old pier on the front. “It’s from Anastasia... written in 2013.”

“What does it say?,” she pressed.

He cleared his throat and read, “I assure you I don’t know what you meant in your letter. If you roll the dice often enough you always get the numbers you want, Mama. If I tell you the sun will shine tomorrow and that it will rain and there will be snow and that clouds will cover the sky and that wind will blow and that it will be a calm day and that thunder will deafen us, then one of those things will turn out to be true and you'll forget the rest because you want to believe that I really can tell the future. You might want to believe there’s something odd and dark about me, but I’m frightfully ordinary. I promise.”

“Frightfully ordinary my ass,” Lily huffed as she and Serafine emptied the closet at the back of the room of its contents, most of which had been packed up into boxes.

“The desk drawers are full of papers,” Adrian said. “Kamilah, come help me.”

She walked to Adrian’s side, almost in a daze and gingerly sat the urn down on top of the desk and cast him a glance that pleaded with him not to touch it. He seemed to understand how much trust it was taking her to let it go for even a moment and reached out to affectionately pat her shoulder and offer a small nod. A wordless promise.

Without saying a word she dropped to her knees and started to dig through the drawers at the left side of the old desk, starting from the biggest drawer at the bottom. When Adrian had said the desk was full of papers she’d expected to find them neatly stacked the way she organised her own desk, but no. The papers had been crumpled and tossed haphazardly into the drawers long ago in seemingly no order.

She wasn’t sure why her hands shook as much as they did when she smoothed out the first piece of lined paper that had been laying at the top of the drawer for decades. Whilst she’d met her mother-in-law only twice, and on what Anastasia would call a Good Day, she’d picked up on the fact she’d been a highly disturbed individual.

To see somebody driven to the point they could hardly function at all by their Bloodkeeper visions was a terrifying thing. It’d made her all the more vigilant regarding Anastasia’s wellbeing, as despite all her gifts Anastasia’s main fault had been she simply had not known when to stop. She would’ve worked herself to that point if she hadn’t had someone telling her when enough was enough.

Her breath hitched as she studied the paper, containing what looked like a ballpoint sketch of what had only just happened in Mydiea in red and green ink. A woman with long hair stood at the centre of burning red flames, and a man lay crumpled at her feet with green magic sparking across his skin.

“Guys,” she said, drawing everybody’s attention as she turned the sketch around.

“She saw Anastasia’s death,” Serafine breathed, sinking down on top of a dusty armchair with her hand on her chest.

“There’s something written on the back,” she mumbled, squinting to try to see the tiny writing that had been inked over the margin of the paper in Latin. “There’s war between the gods,” she read, “war between the ancient gods. When there is war in the heavens the gods make their heirs fight for them on earth.”

“Their... heirs?,” Adrian echoed. “What does that mean?”

“Don’t yell at me, I swear I’m not making a fan fiction reference, but the mortals believe that Merlin was a Cambion,” Lily said. She sighed softly when she was met with a heavy silence and multiple confused stares. “You know, half-demon-half-human. He was born from an Incubus and a human named, Adhan. Don’t you three read?”

“Half-demon,” she echoed. 

“It would be some serious Percy Jackson shit if it turned out our girl was some sorta demigod,” snorted Lily. “Maybe Kristina knew what the fuck she was talking about and Phampira wasn’t Anastasia at all... but she was her mother— as if pulling a full Jesus move and resurrecting herself after a couple of days wasn’t enough. I don’t know about y’all but that seems on brand—“

“Lily,” Serafine breathed, silencing her as she rose to her feet and began manically pacing.

“You cannot be seriously considering that notion—,” Kamilah began, only to cut herself off when she realised she was. “Serafine.”

“In the diary entry I showed you, Anastasia says her mother spoke of demons, Kamilah,” Serafine said. “Stranger things have happened—“

“Stranger things than believing that my wife is somehow the daughter of Phampira?,” she huffed. “It is absurd. I think that is about as strange as it gets—“

“We are currently on a quest to raise her from the dead,” Adrian interjected. “I think we ought to take the strange and seemingly impossible into account.”

~~~~ Three Months Earlier - New York, NY ~~~~

“Kamilah Sayeed, I swear to god if you don’t put me down—“

“You’ll what?,” snorted Kamilah as she shamelessly carried her wife across the lobby of the Ahmanet Financial skyscraper towards the private elevator that led to their home. “You’ll beat me to a painful end with those little fists? I assure you, my love, I am quaking in my Louboutins. Now be quiet. You’re making a scene.”

“I’m making a scene?!,” The Bloodkeeper practically shrieked. “You stormed my office and kidnapped me— when the board asked what you were doing you looked at them and said their mortal minds couldn’t even begin to comprehend what you were actually doing—“

“They couldn’t,” she smirked. “Even just imagining all the filthy things I have in store for you would offend their delicate mortal sensibilities so much it would induce a stroke.”

Anastasia huffed and went limp in her hold. “You are insufferable.”

She chuckled softly. She was such a mixture, tough as nails and lethal, but with her, unfailingly a gentlewoman, tender and sweet, looking out for her so carefully.

“What a way to talk to the woman who is gearing up to fuck you into exhaustion so you’ll finally take a moment to rest,” she teased.

“You can say you’re just making sure I’m well rested all you want but I know the truth.”

“Enlighten me, then,” she pressed.

Anastasia regarded her in silence for a long moment and her mouth curved into that smile that always teased every one of her senses. Amusement. She could feel it and give her that sense of playfulness and joy that she seemed to have in abundance. “You’re horny.”

“Of course I am,” she said without a hint of shame as she returned her to her feet and shoved her against the wall of the elevator. “For days you have been tirelessly leading the community without halting. You have been training with Kano over Zoom and giving him quite the bratty attitude, if I do say so myself— I have often sat in that chair behind my desk and wondered how you would look lying naked in my arms, more so these past days. It is a form of self-inflicted torture!”

“So me being a brat has you wet, does it?,” Anastasia teased as she fisted a hand in her hair and gave a sharp tug, eliciting a delighted hiss from her. One very light kiss was places against the pulse point at her right side, followed by another, and another. “Hmm? Answer me, Kami.”

“Always,” she nodded frantically as her tongue trailed a line down her neck. “However, the mixture of brattiness and raw power you have been exuding had driven me to insanity— ah— and I can take no more. There is only so much my own two hands can achieve.”

Anastasia gave her a light shove back against the opposite wall of the elevator before she could even start tearing her out of her clothes. The shock of it elicited a wheeze from her and all she could do was glare at her, an all too amused smirk playing at her lips.

“Give a bratty bottom an inch and she takes a mile— typical,” she huffed.

Anastasia simply smirked at her as a hand disappeared behind her back to drag down the zip that lined the black Calvin Klein skirt she was wearing. Kamilah watched in awe as Anastasia strolled toward her, a seductive roll to her hips, discarding her clothing piece by piece as she walked. She was smiling, teasing her as she stepped out of her panties and somehow managed to pull her bra out of her white blouse, which she threw at her face.

“Are you trying to kill me?,” she sighed happily.

Anastasia raised her brow and gave her the wickedest smirk she’d ever seen that seemed to promise a thousand filthy things in half a second. “I assure you, I don’t know what you mean.”

“Mhm,” she hummed as the elevator doors opened.

The Bloodkeeper stood before her clad in her thin white blouse, that may as well have been sheer without a bra beneath it. Her nipples showed through the white silk, puckered with desire for her— and that was all she could take. 

The woman was too sexy for her own good, lethal and very confident. The sound of her laughter was enticing. Intriguing. It played along her nerve endings and sent an electrical current running through her bloodstream.

Her mouth went dry. 

Heat pooled in her lower stomach, coiling into a tight knot.

And she all but pounced at her.

Anastasia squealed with laughter as her blouse was torn off and Kamilah backed her into the penthouse— and she didn’t even try to tease her at all as her Armani suit was torn off, piece by piece. All she could focus on was the heat between her legs and the desperate urge to find some sort of relief.

“Oof!,” Anastasia laughed as she was all but tossed onto the couch. “Can’t even wait to get me to the bedroom?”

Kamilah dropped to her knees in front of her and shoved her legs open, pulling them over her shoulders in one impossibly graceful movement. She nipped at the sensitive skin on the inside of her thighs with her fangs, not missing how her breath hitched and that false bravado seemed to waver.

Her soft laughter slid into her mind. It wasn't laughter at her, rather an invitation to join in, to laugh at the two of them in this impossibly wonderful situation they found themselves in, even as the world seemed like it was on the brink of falling apart.

“Have you seen yourself?,” she teased between kisses being left as she moved towards her target. “Even I have my limits— and I assure you, I was quite foolish when I designed the layout of the penthouse. The bedroom is much too far from the foyer for my libido to handle. It is, as Lily would say, a whole thing.”

“Dork.” Anastasia laughed softly and threaded her fingers into her hair. “You don’t even try to be adorable and you somehow are— you’re maddening.”

Her eyes flickered closed at the contact and she leaned in to litter a few kisses against her lower belly, managing to restrain her desired for a few moments more. Her wife naked in her arms like this was a sight she would never tired of. She was feminine beauty personified. Her arms, her breasts, the washboard abs, and sharp hips, absolutely all of her — a delicious feast for her eyes alone.

Anastasia let out a piercing gasp as she finally moved down and ran her tongue through her glistening folds, making low, growling noises in her throat like a big cat purring with pleasure while it devoured its prey.

“Still adore me for kidnapping you from work?,” she teased between sharp little flicks of her tongue, her tone husky. A tone between lovers, between her and the only woman she had ever really wanted like this. Ever really needed.

“Too much,” was her response, and it came paired with a series of breathy gasps as she squirmed in her hold. “I only feel whole when I’m with you. Does that make me weak?” 

Kamilah smiled softly and pressed kisses all over her most intimate area, down to her entrance. “If you’re weak, then so am I.” She could function without her but in the way a machine functioned. Her heart, her soul, she had given to her a long time ago. “It’s a wonderful way to be, I believe.”

Anastasia laughed softly, her giggled trailing off into desperate whimpers as Kamilah worshipped her with her tongue and fingers. She moved within her and she rode out each thrust, met and matched her, welcomed and reluctantly released her again.

“You’re too good with that— ah— mouth of yours,” Anastasia whimpered. “I’m— Kami—“

“It’s alright, my love,” she assured her, taking her hand with her free one as she sucked hard on her clit. “Relax. Enjoy yourself. Finish as many times as you can.”

It was worth the battle to practically haul her from Raines Corp to hear her increasingly ragged gasps, to feel the desperation mount within her and know it was for her, that it was her who was so trusted she was the one orchestrating and controlling her that made her so.

They eventually moved to the bed together and grabbed a few items to increase their pleasure. Each of them taking as much as receiving, with Kamilah being just rough enough to appease them both — though this wasn’t a particular scene that they’d discussed and planned beforehand. They were simply indulging in one another... and that could be just as satisfying at times and would let passion flow unimpeded on its course, as the familiar landscape of sexual delight flowered around them, as passion wound through them and tightened its snare, she was distantly aware of how different the familiar was.

How much more layered with feeling, with meaning, with emotion, that each and every time with her somehow seemed to be.

“Annie!,” she moaned, a guttural sound that sparked a completely different awareness. An instant later, even before she could lift her lids, The Bloodkeeper rolled, taking her with her, trapping them both in a welter of covers. Cushioned in the billows of the bed.

Anastasia’s expression was graven, a mask of urgent desire. "Wrap your legs around me."

She chuckled heartily, even though she was still absolutely reeling. She could barely make out the gravelly command, as what she was still feeling was wondrous. Almost unbelievable. Like champagne bubbles, but in her soul. She felt effervescent. And so in love. It took an instant to register that her palms had slid beneath her backside, supporting her, then to make her muscles obey her enough to obey her.

Were this anybody else, she’d have bristled at the thought of being on the bottom for a change. Looking into Anastasia’s eyes, however, she knew she was safe with her. She felt safe. More, she felt free.

Immediately her thighs clamped about her, Anastasia lowered her hips, and she realised— felt the broad head of the strap Anastasia had just ridden and used her abilities to allow her to feel at the same time nudge against her entrance, then she pressed in, and drew her down.

As she thrust inward.

Her head fell back against the pillows and Anastasia kissed her neck, she gasped as she impaled her, as the sensation of her riding hard and high into her body engulfed her senses, and dragged them down.

Into a whirlpool of seething desire, of passion so hot it scorched, of a need so fiery it melted her bones. She kept thrusting and every nerve she possessed shook, shuddered with a need Anastasia understood. 

Kamilah dug her nails into her back and held her as close as she could as she felt herself start to come undone, moaning breathily as Anastasia purposely slowed her erratic pace and rested her brow against her’s. She moved slowly, deeply, her eyes never leaving her’s.

“Don’t stop,” she murmured so quietly a butterfly wouldn’t have startled at the sound of her voice.

Anastasia smiled and kissed her nose. Her cheeks. The corners of her lips. Her chin. She had no idea she could feel so protected. So beautiful. So cherished. She made her feel all those things. She could give her this — and it was beautiful.

“I’ve got you,” Anastasia assured her, her mouth right at her ear. “I’ve always got you.”

Her words sent a shiver down her spine and her eyes flickered closed in absolute bliss as she clung to her. All she could do was whimper and moan in response... and make noises that no one else had ever managed to draw from her. No one else had ever been so capable of making her scream with bliss in every imaginable position, or knew where to touch her or listened to her breaths and her sighs to know precisely how to touch her, so that the pleasure she experienced was the most intense. No one else could ever make her see stars every... single... time.

The end, when it came, was an implosion of sensation, finer, sharper, reaching more deeply than any such moment before. With a cry, high, triumphant, and feminine, she shattered in her arms— and she only realised Anastasia had been using her abilities when she shuddered atop her as release swept her, and she cried her name, held her down, her grip comforting as she shuddered beneath her.

Anastasia removed the strap fairly quickly and lay down on her heaving chest, and Kamilah cradled her there like she was the most precious thing in the world to her. For a long moment neither of them said anything as they caught their breath, the comfortable silence more intimate than anything either of them had experienced with anyone else. 

“I might just torment myself so much that kidnapping you from work is the only feasible option more often after that,” she said breathily, a gentle smile tugging at her lips.

“It was my pleasure railing you, love,” Anastasia teased.

She huffed. “I ‘railed’ you just as much, so don’t you even start with me.”

They started giggling into their kiss, and once they started they couldn’t stop. Amped up on pheromones and adrenaline, it was damn near impossible to stop.

“Out of sheer curiosity, what exactly were you picturing me doing that made you so horny?,” Anastasia murmured, her thumb brushing against her lower lip as she spoke.

Kamilah playfully sucked the digit into her mouth and let it go with a pop, before pressing a kiss to it. “We were just laying here like this... you were covered in my marks like you are now and...”

“And?,” Anastasia prodded.

She stayed silent for a long moment, simply basking in the afterglow. They fit beautifully together like this. Sex with her shattered her down to her very deepest levels of complexity; even before Anastasia had been aware of it, she was. She didn’t even remember what she said to her during the heat of it all. She said all kinds of things to her, though, and every word of it was always true because she loved her filthy mouth. Anastasia had told her as much many times before. It was a damn good thing too because with her, she simply could not help it. The filter between her brain and her mouth was pretty much nonexistent.

“You told me that you loved me,” she whispered, her eyes shining with a vulnerability she’d only ever show her.

The Bloodkeeper’s expression softened and she gently kissed her lips. “I love you with my entire heart and soul, Kami.” Her words were quiet and fragile, for her and her alone, and her ancient heart fluttered at the sincerity behind them. 

There it was, she thought. Her woman. Laying it all out for her. Giving her truth and making her feel like she was the luckiest woman on earth.

She drew her in for another kiss, a deeper one this time. One that was long and purely self-indulgent. She'd learned to live in the present a long time ago, to enjoy every moment she had. Time was a luxury, something she knew she could run out of very quickly, so she made sure each minute with her beloved counted for something.

“I love you,” she whispered back, “so much.”

Anastasia pressed her brow to hers and sighed softly.

“Will you promise me something, Annie?”

“Anything.”

“If— when... Merlin comes here,” she cleared her throat, “he will come for me. I don’t wish to admit it to anyone else but I find myself...”

“Scared.” It wasn’t a question. Her wife knew she was deathly afraid of this man. 

She nodded and Anastasia caressed her cheek, gently drawing her thumb over her cheekbone. “When I eventually gave into his advances I... don’t know why I did. I drank with him but I poured the drinks... I know there was nothing in them and I didn’t drink enough to be drunk enough to take him to bed—“

“You think he bewitched you into bed with him?”

“Yes,” she whispered, wiping roughly at her eyes. “I’ve never been afraid of anyone but Gaius the way I am afraid of him. After what he did to me, I doubt my ability to defend myself against him—“ She cut herself off and nuzzled closer to Anastasia for comfort, and relaxed as she was tucked beneath her chin and felt her crown being kissed. There was a sense of comfort being wrapped up in her arms. She was calm in the middle of a terrifying experience like this. She was a rock she could cling to. “Just— Just don’t let him get me, alright?”

“Never—“

“I’m serious,” she said, inhaling her scent and squeezing her tighter. “If it looks like he’s going to get me and you can’t kill him, kill me instead. Please.”

The Bloodkeeper’s breath caught in the back of her throat, but she nodded her head, and Kamilah trusted her so much that she knew she would keep her promise. Like Gaius had been, Merlin was the boogeyman who haunted her nightmares. He'd held almost as much absolute authority over her for her most of her life as Gaius had. Defying him at all had been incredibly difficult. It said a lot that she was willing to die — that she would choose a death rather than ever have to go back to him.

“I wouldn’t ask this of you if I wasn’t desperate,” she added. “But I— My love, I am terribly frightened. Perhaps even more than I was than when Gaius returned. Since no one's ever fallen in love with me the way you have, if it came to it I could die with no regrets. I could go out knowing you thought I was worth that.”

Anastasia’s fingers tickled at the roots of her hair and she relaxed in her hold. She had worked very well during her time in The Order of Avalon, as a member of that team, but having Anastasia as a partner was eye-opening. She seemed to anticipate every possibility as she did, and she took steps to protect her more fiercely than any person ever had.

“Nobody will touch you, okay? I will never, ever let this man lay a finger on you again,” Anastasia said as she stroked her hair and kissed her head, over and over again. The words, sliding into her ancient mind, were vibrant with her emotions. Dripping with sensitivity. Weeping with her reaction. Intimate beyond measure. Because she murmured love into her mind, she gave more of herself away to her. “You aren't alone, sweetheart,” she continued. “You aren't one anymore. It's the two of us. Together. We do this together. That is the plan. That was our promise and I count on you, as you can count on me. I’ll do whatever I have to in order to keep you safe.”

~~~~ 1547 - Aragon, Spain ~~~~

“Wonderful!,” Gaius beamed as they watched one of The Order of The Dawn’s outposts burning from a hillside overlooking Aragon. “My friends. My brothers. My queen— on this night we have outdone ourselves, truly!”

Gaius and Merlin threw their arms around one another and laughed as the screams of the dying mortals smouldering alive in their tomb was carried their way on the gentle January breeze.

Kamilah studied them in silence as she stood at the side of Serafine Dupont— a woman who’d earned her respect when she’d responded to Gaius’ advances by kicking him solidly between the thighs and then stamping on his foot. She hadn’t allowed herself to open up to her enough yet to consider her a friend, though, so they simply nodded at one another in the wake of their bloody victory and offered small congratulatory smiles.

She liked that little nod of approval she'd given her as if she were her equal just because she hadn't given into the hysteria welling up, as some people were.

All around members of The Order of Avalon were celebrating. Brothers in arms of all species embracing and cheering loud enough that the anguish of the dying was quickly drowned out by their chorus of applause. Werewolves howled at the full moon overhead. Fae chanted merrily in ancient languages beyond anybody else’s understanding. Vampires flashed their fangs in wide, toothy grins. Wizards and witches sent sparks into the sky which erupted into their calling card, a clear sign to all who dared try to torment them of what they were capable of achieving.

They almost looked like a real family.

A family of misfits... but a family all the same.

She wanted more than anything to feel like she was a part of that, but she wasn’t even sure she was capable of feeling such exuberant joy anymore.

She loved that the Gaius and Merlin were so tight-knit, but these days she felt like she barely knew either of them. She didn't even really know what Merlin had done for a living before The Order, where he was from, or how old he was.

Though she would never admit it, there was just a little bit of fear when she was around Gaius and Merlin. Power clung to them. They wore their stolen wealth so easily, like a second skin. More than that, they were a cloak of pure danger. When either of them walked into a room, there was stunned silence— a collective gasp from any other occupants of the room... one that she, too, felt.

“You fought valiantly,” Merlin beamed as her drew her into an embrace. An embrace she had neither wanted nor asked for. Why was it that men seemed so incapable of keeping their hands to themselves? If they were not brushing her lower back to move past her, they were hugging her, or kissing her cheeks like she was some sort of helpless old fool.

“Indeed,” she nodded, shimmying out of his grasp. “I did.”

“Humble as ever, my queen,” Gaius beamed, bowing at her dramatically at the waist and pressing a kiss to her knuckles. 

She vomited a little inside her mouth. This role play they had going had grown old about five minutes after it had begun, yet she didn’t dare say so. To call him an imbecile was to open herself up to his retribution... and she received enough of that as it was.

She was disappearing a little more each day she spent at his side. She felt so thin, so frail, a wisp of smoke in the wind. One day she would surely vanish altogether, and there was no way to stop her — and she wasn’t even sure that was a bad thing at all.

“All thanks to you, my king,” she smiled back as best she could. “Your compliments have done wonders for my ego.”

He laughed heartily. “Would you like to know who shall face our wrath next?”

“Of course.”

“We leave for England as soon as we can,” Merlin beamed. “We intend to kill King Henry.”

“King Henry?,” she echoed. “Henry VIII? The one who beheaded... many of his wives?”

“Indeed,” the wizard smirked at her. 

She cleared her throat. “Why him when there are many more Order of the Dawn bases scattered throughout the continent?”

Gaius leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Because we can.”

Merlin’s lupine eyes were locked on her as Gaius backed away, in that disconcerting way they often were when he touched her at all. Her stomach churned and she felt no better than a caged animal. A puppet on a lonely string.

She wasn’t sure whether it was the wizards unwanted attention, the fact Gaius had last raised a hand to her hours before after she’d hit him for trying to take her to bed when she wasn’t in the mood, or the fact that the organisation that had been started as a way to liberate the supernatural world was now killing for sport. She knew the mortal they were heading to England to kill was an awful one who would likely deserve the very worst of what they could do, but as far as she knew he had never posed a threat to their world.

What would be the point in going all that way just to kill an oaf who’d likely die soon of natural causes anyway? It was no secret he wasn’t exactly the picture of health.

She’d felt they were heading down a very dark path for quite some time, but this information merely cemented her fears. Instinct was a strange thing. You could not touch it, feel it, smell it, or hear it, but her mother had told her as a girl that she must always trust it, and that night, as they listened to the delighted cheers and the fading pleas of the dying, she was as certain as she could be that her fears had been justified.

It would never end, would it?

This was really what her eternal life was going to be.

Until the world ended in the chaos of war or she allowed an enemy to kill her, this was all she would know. Forever a pawn in the games of these brutes.

She had thought that this new order would be something honourable. Something better than what she had known since her Turning. Something that would allow her to fight for her people, for their lands, and for their homes... wherever they chose to settle.

All she wanted was some semblance of peace and happiness. Was that really too much to ask after being held captive by her murderer all these years and forcing herself to love him, even though deep down she hated him for the life he had cursed her with? 

Some mortals often spoke of peace, of the evil of war, and what sensible person did not want peace? But then some crazed warrior came screaming their god's filthy name into their faces and his only ambitions were to kill them, to rape their women, to turn the weakest in their number into experiments, and so they must fight to live— it was simply the way the world was for vampires. For all supernatural beings.

She supposed she was simply fooling herself if she truly believed the world would ever be different.

Would she even recognise peace if she’d to have a chance at it? Or was she really so far gone that this was all she was?

War was inevitable when the world was as terrible as it was. If you stopped one, another would surely start. Redemption was the only path away from war... and she wasn’t foolish enough to believe her sins could ever truly be redeemed. She had spilled an ocean of blood and it would sooner drown her than float her safely to dry land.

How lonely it was. 

To be drowning, in a place where everyone else could swim.

“Oh the madness of battle!” Merlin sidled up to her and handed her a jug of ale. She knew better than to drink something a man had given her, that she hadn’t seen poured with her own two eyes... especially one who was attracted to her. “We fear it, we celebrate it, the poets sing of it, and when it fills the blood like fire it is a real madness. It is joy!”

“Mhm,” she nodded, pouring the drink onto the grass with a distinctly unamused glare sent his way.

“All the terror is swept away, a man feels he could live forever, he sees the enemy retreating, knows he himself is invincible, that even the gods would shrink from his blade and his bloodied shield,” the wizard continued giddily. “And I am still keening that mad song, the battle song of slaughter, the sound that blotted out the screams of dying men and the crying of the wounded. It is fear, of course, that feeds the battle madness, the release of fear into savagery. You win in the war by being more savage than your enemy, by turning his savagery back into fear.”

“How enlightening,” she deadpanned, “you ought to tell it to someone who is interested in what you have to say.”

He chuckled. “You wound me, Kamilah. Truly.”

She sighed and nodded. “Do you ever take a hint, wizard?”

“I am nothing if not consistent,” he beamed.

“Kamilah,” Serafine interjected as she appeared at her side. “May I have a word?”

“Certainly,” she replied, thrusting the cup into Merlin’s hands before storming off with Serafine. “What—“

“You simply looked like you required rescuing,” the younger vampire smiled softly.

She cleared her throat. “I— Thank you.”

“There’s no need to thank me. There are very few women in our ranks... I believe we ought to look out for each other,” Serafine breathed.

They shared sad smiled, and she recognised her own torment reflected in her dark eyes. She knew very little about this woman, save for the fact she had been born in Albania and had lived in France prior to her Turning. But in her eyes, she saw the sham of her own life laid out like a book, the foolish belief that she, that anyone, could escape the consequences of this world, could flee from death or sadness or the pain that they’d had a hand in causing. 

That was the deceit. 

The true serpent in the garden.


	4. the dead are living still.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; House on a Hill by The Pretty Reckless.

~~~~ Almaty, Kazakhstan ~~~~

“One thing Anastasia and her mother had in common,” Adrian huffed as he ran a hand haphazardly through his disheveled hair, “is that they both wrote like they were aware they were running out of time. Good god— it will take us months to sort through all of these papers.”

Kamilah simply stared at the pile of notebooks and stray pieces of paper littered around the small seating area in the abandoned office, it was all she could bring herself to do after realising that the process of searching for answers would be neither quick nor easy. Anastasia and Kristina had evidently both written almost compulsively, filling books upon books with detailed psychic phenomena riddled throughout mundane day-to-day happenings.

“But we will sort through it,” Serafine said quickly, elbowing Adrian sharply enough in the ribs that he let out a choked wheezing sound. Her dark eyes fell on Kamilah and watched her, and tried to predict whether the realisation that she could possibly be without proper answers for some time would cause her to spiral once again. “Between the four of us, we can see this through.”

Without saying a word to anyone, she grabbed the diary that she had been working on since leaving New York and walked slowly across the room towards the window seat, the urn containing Anastasia’s ashes cuddled tightly to her chest. Dazed and drunk, she sat back down unceremoniously and in a much more undignified manner than anyone would ever dare expect from her. Rather than simply lowering herself, she flopped down and brought her knees to her chest, the urn cradled between her legs and the front of her body where no one could lay a finger on it.

Part of her still couldn’t believe this was really all happening. That her Annie was really gone... but she was also old enough to know that this drive towards denial was a critical part of the human coping mechanism. Without it, everyone would always wake up terrified every morning about all the ways they could potentially die or get injured. Instead, even the weakest minds blocked out their existential fears by focusing on stresses they could handle — like getting to a meeting on time or paying taxes... or reading a diary filled with thoughts that were never supposed to see the light of day.

If she simply focused on reading and not on the fact she wanted to hurl herself into the sun rather than cope with this loneliness, then she might just survive the agony long enough to see her wife again.

She felt everybody’s eyes on her as she opened the book, but she payed them no mind at all. They only wanted to help her, she knew that they did... but she’d never been very good at accepting help even when she needed it most. Especially when she needed it most. Instead of reaching out to her loved ones, she drew inward and pulled away. She lashed out, the fear of the fact that she loved the people that surrounded her and could lose them at any moment driving her to try and push them away rather than rely on them.

It was a problem she knew she had and had been trying to fix since meeting Anastasia... and with her it had been so easy to reach out and tell her when she was hurting. She’d been her safe space. She’d been the one who’d understood her when she got like this, and who’d always pushed back and drew her in regardless of what it was she was going through.

Try as they might, nobody else felt as safe to her as she had been.

Nobody else could even come close.

Her bottom lip began to sting as her teeth clamped down on it hard. Hidden behind the thick chocolate curtain of her hair, she did all she could to focus on the written words before her to keep from crying. To keep her heart rate and breathing even so that nobody would know how close to the verge she was once more.

She wasn’t nearly as good an actress as she believed herself to be, as the others knew damn well how close she was to breaking. They just decided that it would be kinder to pretend that they didn’t notice, knowing without it being said that was what she wanted them to do.

She’d decided to leave trying to decode her mother-in-law’s senseless Latin writings and doodles to Serafine and Lily in order to focus on the things that her wife had written with Adrian. Perhaps it was because she’d held no trust in Kristina before she’d died that she had her serious doubts that anything the woman had jotted down would help her get her wife back. Anastasia was the only person she’d trust to aid her in something this big, anyway, and even now she was the only one the ancient vampire had any desire to turn to for answers.

Heaving a sigh, she focused as best she could on the pages before her. Though her every blink felt like her eyelids were made of sandpaper and her eyelashes weights that made keeping her eyes open quite the challenge. Staving off sleep for this long wasn’t for the faint of heart.

Before beginning to read, she silently prayed to whichever gods were listening that Anastasia hadn’t described any more of her trysts with her exes in the entry she was about to analyse. Never one to skimp on details, Anastasia had recorded everything, which meant Kamilah had now read of a number of tumbles in the sheets with exes and one night stands alike described in the most salacious detail imaginable. 

It wasn’t exactly surprising how much sex she’d apparently enjoyed in her earliest days of living in New York, given that Anastasia had always had a very healthy sex drive and was extraordinarily attractive. But despite how much Kamilah hadn’t wanted to read about her wife’s past relationships and intrude on such intimate moments without her expressed permission to do so, the fact that strange psychic visions and more subtle premonitions were laced throughout her detailed descriptions of her daily life and intimate emotions meant that it was a necessary evil.

The idea of another person touching that precious skin, kissing her sweet, delicious mouth, was more than she could stand. Reading about it was too much. Beyond too much... but she pushed on and hoped that Anastasia wouldn’t feel like she’d violated her privacy too much if and when she eventually got her back.

“As much as I liked Kingsley when I met her, did you really have to describe each and every sex act she performed on you and you on her in such salacious detail?,” she muttered inside her mind, shaking her head in dismay as she skimmed over a paragraph about an escapade to Martha’s Vineyard. “And don’t even get me started on your affair with Samantha Dalton!” She smiled softly. “If it is true what the mortals say, that the dead watch over the living, I just know you’re finding my current predicament much too amusing for your own good. I can almost hear your laughter.”

Her eyes caught the urn in her arms and she sighed, but the sound of Anastasia’s soft laughter slid into her mind. Warm like honey, always filling her up when she hadn't known she was empty. Anastasia had been... extraordinary. A gift. A miracle. She just gave herself to her. She had been so connected to her and she always seemed to know how she felt. It had frightened her, bordering on terrifying her once. Still, she had mattered to her. She had saw her, not the Kamilah the rest of the world had seen for more than two thousand years, but the woman inside who needed. Who didn't want to stand alone. She had given herself to that woman— and that was the woman who grieved her.

She wasn’t sure if it was the weight of her grief, exhaustion, or the sheer amount of alcohol she’d consumed recently that was making her go crazy enough to be talking to herself like this inside her own head where no one else could hear her. It didn’t actually matter the cause, she figured, it only mattered that she was literally talking to herself. In some weird way it helped a little to convince herself that Anastasia was watching and hearing every thought that passed through her mind. 

It made her feel less lost.

Less alone.

More confident that all of this work would actually achieve something.

She rubbed at her eyes again and turned the page of the diary;

_23rd March 2018, Belvoire University;_

_I couldn’t sleep again last night. Although sleep often eludes me, I literally haven’t slept a wink since returning to Belvoire from Martha’s Vineyard four days ago. Even though I had a really fun time with Ina and a few random people we met there — despite Lexi gate crashing the whole thing — the bad dreams are now back. The ones that I tried to talk to Mama about when I was home last and all she said was, “the gods answer all prayers, but sometimes their answer is 'no'.” I found that odd at the time, considering she has been fanatically preaching Russian Orthodoxy to me at every available opportunity since my childhood. She said “Gods”, as in more than one._

_I didn’t think I would ever understand that woman until the last time she spoke to me on the phone. She said something about a wizard who would kill everyone unless his mirror image was sacrificed... I think she might’ve been reading or watching Harry Potter or something because she wasn’t making sense. I did ask her what she meant, and she said that the sacrifice must be his equal— yeah, I think she was definitely talking about Harry and Voldemort. Maybe if she’s feeling well enough to follow a storyline and try to discuss it then that means she’s having more Good Days recently, and that can only be a good thing._

_I guess sometimes all it takes is a tiny shift of perspective to see something familiar in a totally new light. She’s in pain. She’s fighting something she can’t control or understand. I don’t think she’s purposely been mean to be for as long as she has been... and though Ina has told me that my understanding of why she is the way she is doesn’t make it okay or mean that I deserve it, I can’t help but feel sorry for her instead of just hating her the way I always did. I still don’t like her very much but I don’t hate her... I don’t think it’s actually possible to hate somebody once you understand them._

_I sometimes fear I’m going to end up the same way, so perhaps that’s why I’ve been so willing to forgive her so much recently. I’ve told Zoey and Lily my fears because of my dreams and they both think I just need therapy. Even Ina suggested that I try it and offered to help me find a good therapist that I am comfortable with... but I haven’t mentioned the dreams yet. She would only worry._

_They all think that my parents drinking so much and then being sent away from home so young has fucked me up without me even realising that it has— and I don’t think they’re necessarily wrong. I know my childhood has given me many issues that I will eventually have to work through if I ever want a chance at a happiness. Everybody who looks at me can see I’m different from my peers because I’ve never had the sort of love they’ve mostly all taken for granted for so long._

_I struggle to trust people. I apologise way too much. I think everything is my fault. I cry immediately and can’t stop if somebody yells at me, even for something really small. I push people away when they start to show a serious interest in me because I’m so scared of the moment that they will eventually leave me. I distract myself from things with sex and alcohol... though I’ve stopped taking hits of whatever drugs happen to be circulating at parties, so that’s progress._

_Even with all of those issues, I think the most pressing one might be even more serious. Somehow. I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense. All I know is that I don’t think therapy will ever be a real option, because I know if I was even halfway honest about why I am the way I am then I’d end up being involuntarily hospitalised for a long time._

_I see and hear things that other people don’t. When I close my eyes I see terrible things. Things that feel like memories because they seem so, so real... but not my memories because most of the things I see happened a long time before I was born and I don’t recognise the people or places that I see. The flashes of fire and the echoes of screams haunt me even when I’m awake now. There’s always blood, a lot of it, and I can almost feel it sticking to my skin... and then there is the woman. I don’t know who she is and I can’t see her face, but she talks to me. I don’t always remember what she says exactly... she just talks to me and it’s always very nice because she’s there to comfort and guide me after every scary thing I somehow have to see._

_I do remember what she told me last night, though. It was a story about a priestess who somehow became some sort of a monster.. and there was something about a war and an immortal enemy... but that was all I was ready to hear, apparently. “Life is filled with secrets,” she told me. “You can't learn them all at once or in the simplest way that you would hope. Sometimes knowledge is gained only through suffering— it is only through our pain that knowledge grows exponentially. The more we know, the greater our ability to learn, and the faster we expand our knowledge base.”_

_I told her she was being dramatic and she laughed at me. Which, I mean, is perfectly fair. I laugh at myself so often that it makes perfect sense that an elaborate figment of my imagination or an early symptom of schizophrenia finds me just as amusing as I often find myself... right?_

_God. I’m totally spiralling into some sort of breakdown._

_Maybe it’s just the stress of school that’s getting to me. If the amount of people wandering campus in sweatpants and tie dye is anything to go by, all college students have a breakdown at least once before graduation. I even saw one person wearing crocs with socks and I almost gagged. Maybe I’ve just been spared the urge to dress like an acid trip and this is my breakdown— but if I’m being entirely honest, I’d rather have the acid trip because I am driving myself insane._

_I’m trying my best to be as gentle with myself as I would be with anybody else in this position because I’m obviously going through something... but it’s not easy. I can’t exactly escape from myself. So I’m just trying to remind myself of what Ina always says — that only small minds lash out at what they don't understand — and I’m trying as hard as I can to understand myself. I think once I understand what is the root of all this, then I’ll start to feel better and feel less alone._

_The loneliness is the worst part of it all. I feel like I’ve found my place here in New York and I have a great support system... but I feel like I spend every minute standing in the middle of a crowded room screaming at the top of my lungs and nobody can hear me. I know it’s not on purpose that people don’t know how much I’m hurting, I’ve gotten so good at hiding it... I don’t even think I’d know how to stop pretending now because I’m so used to it._

_I wonder if this is how Mama feels. Surrounded by people, yet all alone and tormented by something or someone only she can sense. It’s the worst kind of loneliness in the world, the isolation that comes from being misunderstood. I last felt it when I got to England for the first time and realised my English wasn’t nearly as good as I thought it was. I had all these things I wanted to say, yet no idea how to say them in a way that anybody would understand... so I just said nothing. I’m doing the same thing now._

_This loneliness can make people lose their grasp on reality._

_I just hope I find my way out of this before I lose it completely._

She brushed her fingertips across the Russian cursive written in black ink and heaved another sigh.

His equal. His mirror image. What the hell did that mean?

Still without saying a word to anyone else, she simply marked the entry as significant with the bright yellow sticky-tabs she’d stashed in her pockets.

Time had always been like a river for those granted an immortal lifespan, and books were like boats that allowed them to through down it. Reading these diaries, being inside Anastasia’s brilliant mind and feeling her every emotion... it was a jarring experience. Especially in entries like this one where she hadn’t understood her Bloodkeeper abilities and spent most of the time trying to discern whether she was going crazy or not— when reading ones like this, all she wanted to do was reach through the pages and hug the girl who’d written it.

Even though she’d always felt incredibly close to her wife, it seemed a cruel trick of fate that now there was this whole other layer to her understanding of her and Anastasia wasn’t there to experience it with her.

“Kamilah,” Lily said from the other side of the room.

“What?,” she sighed. “Unless this is of the utmost importance, I am occupied—“

“You should see this,” Adrian interjected.

She sat the diary and the urn down gently on the wooden window seat, allowing her fingertips to linger for a few long seconds on the polished onyx lid before walking away to inspect whatever they’d found... and the moment she saw it, she froze.

“Kamilah?,” Serafine said, alarmed.

Her eyes widened by degrees as she looked at the messy coloured pencil sketch that had been scribbled onto a crumpled piece of A4 paper. The familiar image that had haunted her dreams for centuries of her and her wife stood at opposite ends of a night blooming garden beneath a blood moon was right in front of her, clear as the night sky. 

There was simply no mistaking it.

“That’s impossible,” she breathed. “That— The only place that has ever occurred is inside my head—“

“You’re not making any sense, sister,” Adrian said gently.

“I— Before meeting Anastasia I dreamt of her,” she explained. “For centuries, in times of trouble she would come to me in my dreams and tell me to find her.”

“You had psychic dreams?,” Serafine prodded, her brow furrowed. “That’s— You’re not—“

“No, I’m not,” she confirmed, turning to Adrian. “You remember the day I met her. The reason I was so shaken wasn’t merely because I found her attractive, it was because I’d known her for a long time— for longer than she’d even been alive and—“

“Did Anastasia have any memories of these encounters?,” interjected Serafine.

She shook her head. “None... but she always said she felt something odd happen the moment she met my eyes for the first time. Like she was connected to me, somehow.”

“What else did she say in the dreams?,” asked Lily.

“She didn’t often speak,” she said quietly. “Mostly it was me, chasing her through this strange garden but never catching her. When she did speak, she’d tell me to find her— and there was one instance after a particularly uncomfortable rap— night with Gaius,” she cleared her throat and hoped they hadn’t caught on to what she’d almost said, “when I was close to shoving a stake into my own chest. Instead of running, she walked towards me and took my hand. ‘You’ve been through so much and you’ve been so brave, sweetheart,’ she said to me, ‘Save your strength. I've got this. I’m allowed to help now. All you have to do is stay alive for me. Will you do that for me? Just stay alive.’”

“And then what happened?,” Adrian whispered.

“Not even twenty-four hours later we were able to lock Gaius in the onyx sarcophagus,” she muttered.

“She said... she was allowed to help?,” Lily mumbled. “Allowed by who? What does that even mean? She wasn’t even born until, like, seventy-something years after y’all fucked Gaius up.”

She shrugged and the room fell into a heavy silence, with all of their eyes locked on the sketch resting on the coffee table.

“Lily,” Serafine said, breaking the silence, “you said the mortals had a theory that Merlin was a... Cambion. What, er, what abilities do these creatures possess?”

“Life force absorption is one. Uh, which is basically the ability to drain others of energy when they either kiss them or are intimate with them or in some cases they just touch them and it happens.”

They all looked at Kamilah and her eyes flared red. “I assure you that my Annie was no Cambion. A, because they are fictional creatures. And B, because I stand before you perfectly well after being intimate with her an uncountable number of times— I will not stand for this slander—“

“Shh,” Adrian soothed as he took her hand. “Nobody is saying she was one. We just need to run through every possible scenario because Merlin was more than mere Wizard and he and Anastasia shared many of the same abilities. Let’s just hear what Lily has to say, alright?”

“Sometimes a legend that endures for centuries... endures for a reason,” clarified Serafine.

She heaved a tired sigh and waved her hand. “I apologise... you may continue.”

Lily cleared her throat. “It is said that the victim of the Cambion loses energy and depending on how long they are intimate with the Cambion results in them feeling sick, passing out, or, in the worse case death. As they feed, black and green veins appear on their body transfer and to the person they are feeding on, eventually covering their body completely. When the feeding ends, the veins disappear once the Cambion breaks contact with them. As well, the veins reduce upon the Cambion's skin to the point where they are barely noticeable.” 

“Merlin’s magic was primarily green,” Serafine breathed. “And it showed on his skin.”

“Uh, they also can be very persuasive. They have the ability to convince the strongest mortals and supernatural creatures to do their bidding. It allows the user to control another person by speaking unresistible commands. The victims are unable to disobey; the seemingly cogent commandment is far too compelling.”

She and Serafine locked eyes and each shifted uncomfortably on their feet. Despite not necessarily believing in these creatures... so far things seemed rather compelling.

“Geokinesis is another that they often associate with Cambions—“

“What is that?,” Adrian interrupted.

“Like — again, I ain’t saying our girl was some sorta Cambion — but you know when she would accidentally cause a minor earthquake when she got angry? That’s geokinesis.” She paused and spared Kamilah an apologetic glance before continuing. “They’re also said to be extremely powerful. Like almost omnipotent, able to achieve anything through thought or literation. Some say they can teleport. Then they obviously have the traits vampires have; super strength, speed, agility, immortality, healing factors— but they also come on a spectrum, you know?”

“No,” they all said at once.

Lily sighed and rolled her eyes. “So Cambions are half-demon, right? You got your near-mortal cambions, and they tend to be the weaker ones who just have enhanced physical conditions. Then you got your balanced cambions, who tend to have more powers in regards to empathy and energy manipulation... and other things like that. And then you got your near-demonic cambions, and they are some baddies... I’ll tell you that much.”

“Baddies?,” Serafine echoed. “How so?”

“Well they’re more in tune with their demonic nature, but they might not always know it. They tend to have all of the powers I told y’all about as well as a degree of cosmic awareness. They can astral project—“

“Where are you getting this information from, might I ask?,” she asked impatiently as she began to pace. “First, you all float the idea my Annie was somehow Phampira’s spawn and now you’re floating this utterly ridiculous idea created by mortal fiction writers— Just stop—“

“Kamilah,” Serafine interjected, “we are only having this conversation because all of us were granted an immortal life. We have lived for so long that the dust from our bones should now be almost gone. We once would’ve found the very existence of vampires utterly ridiculous. There were a lot of similarities between Merlin’s power and Anastasia’s that we found too difficult to accept and chose to ignore, that may now help us figure out exactly what we have to do to bring her home. Like it or not, we were all blinded by our proximity to her. You must try to keep an open mind because what we’re dealing with here—“

“Stop!,” she snapped as a sob choked her. “Just— think whatever you want!" She yelled at them, snatching an old coffee table book about Japanese architecture and throwing it into the dusty fireplace. "I don’t care! I can’t do this anymore— I want it all to end!”

Nobody made a single move to stop her or so much as flinched as she tore old books from the shelves and fired them around the room in her anger. Demolishing the office wasn’t going to accomplish anything but she couldn’t stop as the tears poured down both of her cheeks with no sign of halting.

“You do care,” Adrian said as he noticed her reaching for her blades, knowing her well enough that she was intent on tearing out what was left of her heart. He wrapped both of his arms around her from behind and tried to restrain her as best he could as she sobbed and attempted buck him off. “You care about everything so much you feel as though you are dying with the pain of it.”

“We’re not giving up on either of you,” Serafine added as she joined Adrian in the restraint. She steadied her from the front and drew her face into the warmth of her neck, allowing her once again to cry all over her. “We’re not going to stop, you understand me?”

“Please just let me go,” she whimpered. “I’ve endured more than two thousand years of life and I— just let me be with my Annie again. I cannot bear this.”

“We know,” Lily whispered as she appeared beside them and wrapped her arms around all three of them. Now sandwiched in the middle of them, she was powerless to move. “Our hearts are fucking breaking, too. She is— was... our sister, you know? You’re not the only one who loved her.”

“I know you all loved her dearly,” she whimpered, her voice muffled into the red silk of Serafine’s blouse, “but you all have no idea the pain that I feel. You know nothing of how thoroughly her death has ruined me—“

“Yes, I do,” Adrian said softly. “I have been where you are after watching both my wife and my child die. I know exactly what it is that you are feeling— but if we discover how to bring Anastasia back, perhaps there will be a way that I can see Eleanor and Charles again. That after all this time of feeling the way you are right at this moment, I could be with them once more— so we have to keep going... you are not the only broken one in our number with nothing more to lose and everything to gain.”

Kamilah felt her knees buckle and Lily manoeuvred them all down to the floor, all of them sobbing inconsolably.

For decades she had trusted in her wife’s abilities and her connection to all that was bigger than herself. Yet as she sat there, having lost the one she loved most in the world, all she felt was anger. Not anger that was necessarily all directed towards Anastasia, but anger at the fact there were some things she simply hadn’t had the vocabulary to explain to anybody — things that no one but The Bloodkeeper herself could ever understand or prepare for.

Anastasia’s mind had always been a wild, tangled forest with temples and treasures concealed within her frail looking body. Even now, trying to understand what they had to do and perform the sort of mental gymnastics she’d had to do everyday of her life without her guidance was damn near impossible.

They all needed her like they needed the air they breathed.

~~~~ Ten Weeks Earlier - Washington, D.C. ~~~~

“She’s dead,” Anastasia concluded as she nudged the president’s stiff corpse with the toe of her boot. The middle-aged mortal was sprawled beneath the conference table in the secret bunker beneath The White House, her body surrounded by the remains of multiple prominent cabinet members and secret service agents all stained with the familiar greenish-black vein-like scars one received when they were hit with Merlin’s powerful magic.

It wasn't like Kamilah could name one single thing about these corpses that made them stand out in her mind. A corpse was a corpse and she’d seen plenty in her life. More than enough to be entirely unfazed by the sight of one rotting before her eyes. But now, these particular corpses just gave off a very dangerous vibe — mortals who liked to believe they had authority over things they couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Politicians had always been the worst sort of mortals in her mind. Being with them really did feel as if she were inside a tiger's cage, surrounded by the slaughtered big cats.

“It’s her own fault,” Kamilah concluded rather cooly, “did the fool honestly believe you were telling her she needed supernatural protection for the good of your health? Mortals. Bloody mortals. Always thinking they know best and then having the audacity to die looking shocked when they’re eventually maimed—“

“Kami,” Anastasia deadpanned.

She huffed indignantly. “Perhaps I may be more than a little irritated that this crisis could’ve been averted if the mortals had elected someone with more than two brain cells to rub together. Stake me, why don’t you?”

The Bloodkeeper bent down at the dead woman’s side and Kamilah stood guard over her, daggers in hand. With a trembling had she brushed her dark hair out of her face and closed her eyes out of respect, before trying to tune her abilities into the energy in the room that had only been disturbed when they’d walked in on the orders of the new president — who’d thankfully agreed to listen to their warnings concerning Merlin and The Order of Avalon.

Anastasia took a series of deep breaths and the room became slightly warmer. Her abilities were a matter of focusing the disciplined will. Similar to the magic Merlin and his followers were executing in their attacks on the mortal world. But sometimes the will must be abandoned. The secret lay in knowing when to exercise control, and when to let go.

“Annie, what is happening?,” she practically shrieked as a horrible chill shot down the length of her spine and she felt herself freeze in terror before she’d really registered what was occurring.

Anastasia opened her eyes and simply gaped at what they were seeing. “That’s... new.”

“It’s him!,” she said, lunging ahead of her with both of her blades in hand, only to be grabbed by the waist and held still.

“It’s not him,” Anastasia soothed. “The lingering effects of his magic and my abilities have connected and produced... well... this—“

She stopped in her tracks. Her frightened eyes locked onto the black-cloaked figure standing before her, a smoky human form, darker than the deepest caves and trenches of the known world. Light would not penetrate it, as it hovered motionlessly, a foot above the floor, surrounded by an all too familiar green halo of power.

Phantom screams echoed off of the walls as ghostly figures of the people now laying cold on the floor lived out their final moments before their very eyes.

“What is this sorcery?!,” she snarled. For a good long moment she didn't move, staying as still as any predator with her gaze fixed on her prey. No muscle moved. She could hardly even breathe properly. “You’ve inspected deaths caused by witches and wizards a dozen times before and this has never happened.”

“I don’t know— did his eyes always glow green like that when he used the full extent of his powers? You know, like how mines glow red?,” Anastasia prodded as she circled the apparition, not giving it anywhere near the sort of cautiously wide berth that most people would. “And did he always float like that when he was in a trance... with green veins on his skin?”

“Yes to all of those things,” she muttered, hauling her away from it with a sharp tug of her wrist. Even seeing her standing so close to an apparition of him was sickening and she simply couldn’t bear it. “Why do you ask?”

“Because besides Rheya and I, I’ve never seen anyone else be able to fall into such a trance that gravity becomes inconsequential— it’s not like consciously making yourself float, anyone with the weakest psychic abilities could do that if they focused hard enough. This... requires quite a lot of power. To defy the laws of gravity, it takes more power than the average witch or wizard is capable of,” Anastasia breathed.

“His magic is darkness that feeds on apathy,” she said quietly.

Anastasia gave her hand a supportive squeeze before her eyes drifted back to the ghostly figure ahead of them when a dying voice croaked out the simple question, “What are you?”

Merlin’s familiar laugh made her so nauseous she began to sweat profusely.

“Are you a demon?,” the dying woman asked.

“If The Bloodkeeper that tried to protect you has taught you anything, it is that angels and demons are identical interchangeable archetypes, Madame President,” the wizard crooned as he crouched beside the wheezing mortal and took her hand, the green veins on his skin sparkling. “All a matter of polarity that your simple little mind obviously cannot even begin to comprehend. She is the most dangerous woman you have ever met, and she doesn’t yet know a fraction of what she is truly capable of.”

“W-what?”

“That delightful guardian angel who could’ve conquered your enemy in battle, had you heeded her advice, is perceived by your enemy as a demon destroyer. I wouldn’t have come if you’d had her guarding you... it simply would not have been worth the risk,” he smiled. “How does it feel, hmm? To know that it was nothing more than your own hubris that caused your death?”

No reply came, and the spectre faded away until there was only them, stood in the centre of a room full of corpses. 

“A demon destroyer?,” snorted Anastasia. “I’m stealing that one for my social media bio.”

“Of course you are,” she breathed. “Do you have any idea where he went? Do you sense him at all?”

“He’s not here, and he somehow left no trace.” Anastasia shook her head. It was a great and terrible burden to both know so much and so little about the world, and she watched everyday as her wife handled it with grace and more dignity than anybody else ever could. 

To have such an ancient power in one’s veins and so many memories that did not belong to her often made her appear almost haunted by the ghosts that nobody else could see the vast majority of the time. She knew all the histories of the world before their own. That was the world of mortal empires, of corruption, of secrecy, of an unending stream of wars financed on both sides by the same influential mortal families — and less freedom than they’d known since Anastasia had said ‘no more’. But the people of that time were all long dead and gone, their dreams in ruin, existing only in the minds of idiot mortals who didn’t know how good they had it now... nothing more than smoke and ash.

The ancient vampire’s heart bled for her young wife who had all the power of a sovereign within their community. She watched her for a long moment, thinking herself in circles. History did not care about the suffering of the individual or how uneasily the head that wore the crown rested... however figurative their crown may have been. Only the outcome of their struggles mattered in the grand scheme of things — and at the end of the day, everybody was looking to her to figure this out.

“You said before he had a hand in killing Henry VIII at the time when England was the most powerful country in the world? Or one of the most powerful— sort of like America is today...”

“Indeed. He used a rare sort of blood magic that killed him fairly quickly, merely to show that he could,” she nodded. 

Anastasia nodded and walked slowly around the room, her eyes studying each and every one of the corpses. “And did he kill any other mortal world leaders that you’re aware of?”

“Many monarchs and nobles over the years and their offspring,” she replied. “Why?”

“Because we need to know if he’s going to systematically go after each and every mortal world leader one by one— I can try tracking him again but I don’t know how much use it’ll be. He only lets me into his head when he wants me to see something,” Anastasia sighed, cracking her knuckles. “As powerful as I am... he probably has thousands of years of more practice.”

Kamilah swallowed thickly and looked at the floor. She had to know, soon or later— she already knew that she was no saint and never would be... but she had to know. Kamilah loved her, but if she was going to stay with her, she had to know the worst of her. She wanted honesty between them.

“Who did The Order kill, Kami?,” Anastasia pressed.

“You’re technically distantly related to many European royal families and Russian noble families—“

“Kami.”

She sighed. “In Russia they killed; Alexei The Quiet, Peter The Great, and Peter III— and I already know you’re aware of the supposed Yusupov Curse. They were always an incredibly wealthy and influential family and that was an attraction—“

“The Order was responsible for all of those early deaths?,” Anastasia whispered.

“Not all of them,” she said quickly, “but more than one of them— Annie, I’m so sorry. I never personally— which is no excuse but I— I should’ve spoken up because I knew it was wrong but I was frightened and— God— I—“

“Shh,” Anastasia said, drawing her into a tight hug. “Thank you for being honest with me.”

She froze. It still always seemed to surprise her whenever Anastasia didn’t start berating her the way she’d come to expect from Gaius or even the other lovers she’d hidden from him throughout her life.

“I just admitted to being part of an organisation that killed more than one of your ancestors—“

“Yes, you did,” Anastasia sighed. “I’m obviously shaken by it, Kami, but thats not who you are now. That’s not who you were when we met. That’s not who you’ve been since— and it’s not who you’ll ever be again. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s not my place to judge who you were or what you did centuries ago. I can only judge the woman I know.”

She nodded tightly and pressed a kiss between her brows. “I should’ve told you sooner—“

“No,” Anastasia interjected. “There’s no ‘should’. You tell me things only if and when you’re comfortable doing so, alright? Your past is a difficult thing for you to talk about and I understand that. You heal and work through your shit at your own pace and there is never any pressure from me.” She kissed her cheek. “And you’re doing great.”

All she could do was stare at her with her mouth hanging open for a good long while. There was so much kindness in her and so much compassion. Two characteristics she, herself, often didn't have. Or at least, not in abundance with anybody but her. For so long she had been the perfect killing machine, she hadn’t needed to feel bad. Once unleashed, set on a course, she had simply followed it until it was done.

“I— Thank you,” she stammered.

“We can talk more about it later if you want,” Anastasia said softly, “but for now— what are we going to do about this?”

“Right now The Order seems to be doing nothing more than waving their dicks around as a show of strength,” she sighed. “Trying to intimidate the mortal community by assassinating their leaders. Trying to show us what they can do. It’s a tactic Merlin has employed for centuries... and from the outside it seems that his goal is the same as it always was.”

Anastasia nodded slowly. “Putting mortals in what he believes is their rightful place— but where the hell was he for centuries? He doesn’t seem like the type to take a few centuries long vacation.”

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “That is something I can think of no logical explanation for.”

“Come on then,” Anastasia breathed. “We have to talk with the others and the president is expecting a game plan tomorrow morning— it’s going to be a really long night and— are you really eating gummy bears right now?”

Kamilah froze with her hand halfway to her lips, the little blue gummy creature infused with a blue raspberry flavoured vodka held between her thumb and index finger, and she reached out and placed it between Anastasia’s lips. “Me being hangry is not going to make this any easier on anybody.”

Anastasia shook her head and started giggling as she chewed. “You are ridiculous.”

“You ought to be honoured I willingly share my favourite snack food with you— it seems these mortals are not all entirely foolish to have invented such a pleasant delicacy.”

“You’re adorable.”

“Thank you. I do try.”

~~~~ 1675 - Bordeaux, France ~~~~

“Where are you two off to?,” Gaius asked, interrupting as Kamilah and Serafine walked side by side towards the courtyard of the castle their number had commandeered.

“To discuss which fabrics we’d like for our new dresses,” Serafine lied, holding up the bottle of wine they’d stolen from the kitchens. “It is a decision that requires alcohol and no interruptions.”

“Didn’t you two just discuss that this morning?,” Banner asked.

Kamilah scoffed. That morning she and Serafine had been trysting in dungeons after excusing themselves from patrol duty in the name of fashion, as they often did whenever they grew bored of doing their part to appease Gaius or Merlin — whenever he returned from the often long months away he’d take without a single word of warning or every thinking to offer an explanation for.

“Whilst you may be happy to trot around in that gaudy suit of armour for the rest of your senseless existence, some of us desire to look good,” she scoffed at the pup. “Is that really so incomprehensible?”

Gaius snorted and flicked her a quick glance. It was one of those looks that seemed to burn a hole right through her. She shivered, not liking those eyes on her even though he was clearly in a very good mood and she sensed no danger from him. They were intelligent, focused — almost too focused. They didn't blink, and it felt like death looking at her.

“My queen, you make a salient point,” he beamed before taking a sip out of the blood he’d poured into a golden chalice they’d taken from The Knights Templar centuries earlier. “Banner has been wearing that suit of armour for a rather long period of time. It could do with a polishing.”

Banner huffed and crossed his arms petulantly over his chest. “It is a perfectly practical piece of attire.”

The room hung in an uneasy silence as a group of scared young mortals who’d once occupied the castle they were living in were led through the great hall on silver chains. These mortal nobles were little more than boys... not even real soldiers at all... no more than twenty-one, with seemingly too much to live for, and too little reason to die as part of that evening’s feast.

They were the lowest ranking members of whatever noble house The Order had acquired this castle from... bastard sons of a local lord, perhaps. Little more than servants to their superiors dressed in The Order’s prisoners typical red tunics, torn trousers, and ratty shoes. So much red they could easily have already been bleeding. And around their ankles, clinking against the ground, were silver chains. The sound scraped against everybody in the room, drowning out the anxious mortal heartbeats and the sounds of nature from outside and even the ass-kissing underlings at Gaius’ beck and call.

The chains were all Kamilah could hear as she stood there with Serafine.

“As you say,” jeered Gaius before looking back at her after regarding the prisoners and picking out which one he’d devour first. “Pick out something in a nice dark red. Velvet, perhaps. I do so love the way it matches your eyes in the heat of battle.”

“Of course, my king,” she breathed.

Without another word, Serafine grabbed her by the arm and they took off. 

It was at times like this she was thankful that they’d developed a friendship. Whilst the casual sex that didn’t end in her faking an orgasm and then excusing herself to sob and scrub her skin until it bled was certainly a perk, it was nice just to have somebody she felt like she could trust. Somebody that she actually liked.

“Do you ever want to punch him in the face when he starts that role play?,” she huffed. 

“Starts it?,” she snorted. “That implies he ever stops.”

Serafine rolled her eyes as they sat themselves down in a quiet corner of the courtyard, far away from any of the other drunken debauchery. Nights like this when they could simply do nothing but get themselves drunk enough to feel alive were a rarity. Gaius was busy. Merlin had only left the night before. There was nothing to interrupt them.

“Do you ever wonder if this is all there is to life?,” Serafine asked, handing her the bottle of well-aged wine. It seemed that in their rush to grab a decent bottle they’d forgotten glasses, so they were resulting to drinking straight from the glass lips. “This endless stream of senseless slaughter and waging wars that do not accomplish a single thing?”

“Since my mortal life I have often wondered,” she sighed, taking a drink. “I was a princess of Egypt once, I do not know anything else. Nor do I believe I am even capable of living any other way.”

“I often feel the same way... more so lately than I previously have.”

She handed her back the bottle. “Things have become more... unhinged. I think everybody has lost sight of what we were originally fighting for.”

“Those who know what it's like in the dark will do anything to stay in the light.” She took a sip of the wine. “Or what they perceive to be the light.”

“Don't act like we're the same,” she sighed, regarding her for a long moment as she drank. “You’re not—“

“The same? No.” The psychic shook her head and passed the bottle. When she spoke again her voice, with its raspy French twang, reminded her of magnolias and rich whiskey. “But perhaps... we're even. The blood I have spilled in the name of freedom that we never seem to achieve— I often wonder if I will ever find redemption.”

The late summer thunder rattled the hanging lanterns of brightly coloured glass that had been hung on the trees they were sat at— strangely beautiful, as if someone had once been determined to give this barren place some loveliness — that served as the main lights in the old mossy courtyard. As beautiful as it was, it did nothing to help the headache brewing behind her eyes.

“Redemption,” she huffed. “I don’t even know the meaning of the word anymore.”

Serafine laughed humourlessly. “What has this world done to us?”

She shook her head. “We are their creatures. Their dogs to command.”

“We should run,” Serafine whispered.

“You know as well as I do that they would find us,” she sighed. “We will never be free. There is nowhere we could go that they would not find us.”

“It is times like this that I find myself oddly jealous of mortals.” Serafine wiped roughly at her eyes. “A life with an end in sight seems a beautiful thing.”

“There’s no shame in breaking,” she told her. “You know I do so often enough. You just have to put yourself back together again.”

They fell into a heavy silence.

It wasn’t like Kamilah hadn’t thought of running many times. It wasn’t like she hadn’t tried it. She knew that it was impossible even in the quieter moments like this one — a season of life when nothing of any great importance seemed to be happening, when no smoke betrayed a burnt town or village in their wake and few tears were shed for the newly dead. 

In her long life she had learned not to trust such times, because if the world was seemingly at peace then it meant someone was planning a war. 

She was tired... dreadfully so. She’d lived for so long that everything had lost its appeal and everything seemed worthless. Stuck in a life with people who masqueraded as gentlemen, who were not quite the honourable warriors they considered themselves. Her entire life seemed to be a cycle of the same fateful day over and over again, they met an enemy for the first time and they heard the chants of battle, the threatening clash of blades on shields, and they began to learn that the poets were all wrong and that the proud songs were nothing more than lies.

“It's one thing to accept one's destiny,” Serafine said after a long moment. “It's quite another to live it.”


	5. if i didn't know better i’d think you were listening to me now.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; Marjorie by Taylor Swift.

~~~~ Almaty, Kazakhstan ~~~~

In the huge hotel suite that had been rented for them to stay in for the duration of their stay in Kazakhstan, Kamilah sat alone in her bedroom with the door closed. The bed felt much too big and the room much too empty, even after she’d draped Anastasia’s favourite blanket around her shoulders. The dusky pink knitted fabric was no substitute for her embrace, though the fact that it still held her scent was a great comfort.

Through the open balcony doors the cooling breeze was invading with scents of the night. The traffic noises behind the waving linen curtain and the sounds of the others working away in the living area outside her room splashed the silence, but the noise didn’t bother her. It was nice to have the space normally filled by Anastasia’s never ending commentary on her innermost abstract thoughts filled with something, even if she had no desire to be part of whatever conversation was happening.

Despite the fact she’d asked everybody not to bother her unless it was an urgent matter regarding something they’d read, a little while earlier Adrian had brought her some avocado toast that he’d ordered her from room service. So far, despite it being a delicacy she’d normally find quite enjoyable, it remained completely untouched on the table across the room. Next to it the small cooler still full of bags of blood that she couldn’t bring herself to stomach either.

It wasn’t necessarily that she wasn’t hungry or didn’t need to feed. She was. She did. But the thought of anything entering her body that wouldn’t numb the pain just wasn’t sitting well with her. Anyway... alcohol could provide a perfectly adequate number of calories if you were dedicated to consume enough of it. 

And she was.

“I know you would be far from pleased with me right now,” she whispered to the urn rested on her lap as she rubbed the pink blanket against her face, inhaling the scent of home deep into her lungs. At this point she was well beyond the point of caring that she was whispering aloud to herself in her grief and exhaustion driven delirium. She couldn’t bring herself to care about anything. “I just— I don’t know what to do, Annie. You’ve left us so many clues but I— you write everything in a way that makes it seem significant but it can’t all be, can it?”

She was met with silence.

Silence where Anastasia usually would’ve sat herself down on her knee and launched into a dizzying but highly enthusiastic discussion about obscure psychic theories that nobody with a less-than-genius IQ could possibly begin to understand. She was the problem solver. She was the one who could think outside the box to concoct elaborate explanations to almost every problem she was presented with. She was the one who’d likely have already figured out how to resurrect her, had she died in her place.

Kamilah, on the other hand, whilst she was incredibly smart and had thousands of years worth of life experience, she tended not to have the patience for the amount of introspection and creativity Anastasia employed in solving cantankerous puzzles like this one. Her thinking was very black and white, with little grey area occurring to her naturally if she wasn’t gently guided into it. If she couldn’t stab or behead the things that were pissing her off, she tended to get frustrated with herself rather quickly.

“There’s a ritual to wake the dead that you apparently pulled from Phampira’s memories, according to Serafine and Kano. Ridiculous theories about you either being her spawn or some sort of... cambion... that are supported by your mother repeatedly writing that you weren’t her real daughter — vile old bat that she was — and the fact I’m actually beginning to believe Merlin was one of these creatures that simply should not exist outside of mortal literature. Lily has been very... informative about the subject, to say the least.” She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Then there is the woman you saw in your dreams— at first I wondered if you were seeing me, as I was seeing you... but I no longer think that is the case. She came to you the night we met and told you that you were on the right path, that you had to keep me close— I don’t think— None of this is making any sense to me, Annie. Not one bit of it.”

She rubbed the fabric of the blanket against her face again and a shiver rattled through her aching body. She inhaled her wife’s lingering floral scent like it was her drug of choice and she was seeking a high.

“You would look at these pieces of information and find a pattern — likely the smallest of details that the rest of us are overlooking — and you would spin multiple well oiled theories from the smallest of details,” she breathed. “The only pattern I can see between your writings and your mother’s is that you both frequently talk of seeing some sort of garden in the middle of a forest in your visions. You both call it Brocéliande, and according to Lily it is a legendary enchanted forest— Yes, indeed, this is really where we’re at now. Enchanted forests, the spawn of a goddess or a demon— I used to believe that when all else failed me, logic never would, but logic has flown out the window and I don’t predict it’s return any time soon.” She ran a hand through her messy hair. “We’re grasping at straws and this is a wild goose chase sparked by a comment you made in passing about some ritual that shouldn’t exist— I think we’ve all gotten complacent and have come to rely on you for answers more than we even realised until now.”

She drummed her fingertips against the closed diary rested beside her on the bed and then lifted them to brush against the old life’s blessing hanging around her neck. The small glass vial containing a tiny sample of her wife’s mortal blood on the end of an ornate white gold chain that she had been given on their first Dark Solstice together often brought her comfort. Whenever she had to travel for business or Anastasia had to travel, the life’s blessing hung around her neck. Sometimes she’d wear it as a normal accessory but she always tended to gravitate to it when she and Anastasia couldn’t be together for whatever reason— and she hadn’t taken it off even once since losing her. The only new additions were the engagement ring and wedding band hanging on either side of the vial for safekeeping.

“In my dreams, you once spoke of being ‘allowed’ to help me. The night before we defeated Gaius for the first time— was the woman haunting yours the one who allowed you to aid us, perhaps? But who would she be?,” she puzzled, pressing the cool glass vial to her lips. “What would you do right now, my love? If you couldn’t figure it out and you were only getting more anxious and more ready to hurl yourself into the sun by the minute... what would you do instead? How would you change your perspective?”

More silence met the whispered questions and a soft growl left her lips. Her fist tightened around the precious trinkets hanging around her neck as she racked her brain for answers. 

She looked down at the urn and furiously blinked back her tears. 

When swimming into a dark tunnel with no light, there arrived a point of no return when you no longer had enough breath in you to double back. Your choice was only to swim forward into the unknown.... and pray for an exit.

That’s all she was doing now. 

Drowning in the dark and hoping to be able to come up for air.

The soft pink fabric of the blanket became soaked in the rain of her tears when she could no longer hold them in and they began unstoppably pouring from her ancient eyes to the lid of the urn on her lap. The crying didn’t release anything the way it normally would, the ultimate despair in her soul not decreasing a bit. 

It was then she realised how inner suffering could be much more hurtful than any physical pain. She’d rather be sawn in half whilst simultaneously being burnt to death in the sun than endure this agony for a moment longer.

“What would you do?,” she whispered again. “Annie, what on earth would you do?”

There was a long moment of silence, and then something Anastasia had once said to her in passing popped into her mind. Out of all the heart-to-heart conversations they’d had, she wasn’t sure why she’d thought of something muttered half-asleep in a grimy Waffle House at 3am on the way to Adrian’s cabin.

“You look into the abyss and the abyss looks back,” Anastasia had said to her over a cup of terrible coffee all those years ago, shrugging her shoulders nonchalantly. “Then you punch the abyss in the face.”

“Punch the abyss in the face,” she muttered to herself. “You always had such an odd way of looking at things. I thought you were a mortal with a death wish when you told me that. I almost told you as much but I decided it would be prudent to mind my manners considering I was actively trying — as you would say — to get in your pants.”

Heaving a sigh, she picked up the diary she’d been reading and opened it back up. Turning to the next entry, and froze in horror when she saw what was written. It was nothing more than a series of numbers. A two digit number, followed by fifteen numbers after a decimal point... and they were all different.

Of course Anastasia had likely created some sort of unsolvable numerical cypher than nobody besides a Nobel prize winning academic would be capable of solving. It was exactly the sort of thing she’d find entertaining.

“I know you loved mathematics but, Annie, what the fuck?,” she growled as she rose to her feet and started off towards the living room with such speed that she practically tore her bedroom door from its hinges.

“Kamilah,” everybody said at once.

“Adrian,” she said, tossing him the diary. “You’re the only one here who will not off themselves at the very sight of this nonsense. Apparently she thought it a brilliant idea to start writing in a mathematical code that nobody can understand—“

“Relax. These are co-ordinates, Kamilah,” Adrian interjected. “She’s written a list of co-ordinates.”

Her brow furrowed and she pouted her lips. “I— I knew that.”

“But why?,” Lily echoed as she quickly pulled up Google Earth on her laptop. “What sorta Goonie’s shit has this fucking nerd been up to in her free time? Co-ordinates— Kamilah, you clearly weren’t eating my girl’s pussy enough if she had time to turn us into the fucking Goonies from beyond the grave.”

Kamilah glared at her. “Lily Spencer, I assure you, I pleasured my wife beyond the point of exhaustion as often as she would allow me and in ways you cannot even begin to comprehend. So I suggest you reel it in.”

“I guess we’ll find out why she was writing random co-ordinates,” Serafine interjected before Lily could retort.

She sat herself down gingerly beside Adrian as he read out the first set of co-ordinates to Lily and she stared at the hideous paintings that decorated the walls of the living room. Whichever mortal fool that had designed the penthouse presidential suite had paid some madman who thought he was a decorator a lot of money to make the place look hip and unique. Maybe it was her lack of appreciation for modern art talking, but she thought they should have held out for one of those gorillas who had learned to paint. The results would have been of similar quality, and the commission could have paid in fresh produce.

The artwork was in no way as soothing or in any way relaxing as minimalists had been claiming since the dawn of the movement in the twentieth century. If anything, it was only making her more agitated.

“It’s Mydiea,” she said eventually. “Like, right in the centre of the island where the temple would probably be.”

Adrian read the next set.

“The Met,” Lily responded. “Right over— Jesus— it’s exactly where the dumb bitch went and died on me the first time.”

Then he read the next set.

“It’s in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle and there’s nothing there... but imma go ahead and say this is where Demetrius was doing the whole Netflix and Chill thing, minus the sex and the Netflix. The island wasn’t on the map, right?”

And the next.

“The opera house.”

And the last set.

“It’s... some random forest in Brittany, France,” Lily said with her brow furrowed. “Paimpont forest— oh shit. This is the place I was telling y’all about, you know the one the mortals say is the fairytale forest from the Arthurian legends! Y’all! She’s marked an exact point in the middle of this mystical ass forest—“

“I thought you were joking with that,” Serafine murmured.

“I know it may shock you, but I’m capable of being serious at times!,” Lily laughed. “I’m still an asshole, don’t get me wrong. Just a serious asshole.”

“She’s actually written down it’s location,” Kamilah said slowly. 

She looked down at the hastily scrawled numbers in sparkly black ink that were slightly smudged on the page— a classic sign of a lefty writing much too quickly for their own good. Anastasia may not have understood the whole of her connection to the universe when she’d written them down but the fact she had just recorded this information like it was nothing made Kamilah want to burn the whole goddamn universe to smithereens.

What must it be like to know what her wife had known? She wondered.

She got up and paced over to the mini bar in search of another drink. A bottle of cheap white wine was the first thing that her hand touched, so that was what she wound up with. Rather than bothering with a corkscrew she simply whacked the bottle neck against the wall until it shattered and then began pouring the overly vinegary tasting drink into her mouth. 

“Do you really need another drink?,” Adrian whispered.

She turned to glare at him, her eyes glowing a fiery shade of crimson. “Don’t even start with me. I watched the love of my life be torn to pieces by her own abilities only seven days ago—“

“And you haven’t fed or eaten anything substantial since then,” Adrian interjected. “If you ate something— even if it was just a packet of those gummy bears that you enjoy—“

“Stop,” she muttered. “The unbearable urge to splatter someone across a wall lessens when I have a strong drink in my system. I have no interest in consuming anything else.”

Everybody sighed as she sat herself back down in an ungracious heap on the couch. At this point they all knew better than to try to forcibly take her coping mechanism from her, regardless of how unhealthy it was. The drink was the only thing keeping her afloat.

“The forest from Annie’s visions. From Kristina’s visions— it’s a real place,” she continued, rubbing at her temples as she spoke, “but she was still a mortal when she wrote all of this and we hadn’t yet set foot in Mydiea. How could— Her abilities weren’t that powerful... how could she possibly have predicted each and every one of these significant locations—“

“She wouldn’t have known what it was she was seeing,” Serafine explained. “Even if she’d searched the co-ordinates before recording them, she wouldn’t have understood their significance— we know the significance of the first three. Paimpont forest, however, we do not—“

“I’m already texting our pilot,” Adrian said. “Brittany, you said, Lily?”

“Yup,” she nodded.

Serafine reached out and rested a hand on her forearm, drawing her attention. “She may not be here in the flesh,” she said softly, “but our brilliant girl is helping us, still. All we have to do is put the pieces of this puzzle together, Kamilah. She’s leading us to the answers that we need.”

She swallowed thickly. “Do you really think so?”

“I know so,” Serafine said, nodding her head with absolute certainty. “We’re not fending for ourselves here, even though it may feel that way. She’s given us everything we need to see this through— her connection to Merlin, the ritual, we’ll figure it out.”

“You and your optimism,” she huffed. “For once I don’t mind it.”

~~~~ Ten Weeks Earlier - New York, NY ~~~~

“Bloodkeeper,” Kano muttered disapprovingly as he paced in front of an exhausted Anastasia as she fell to her knees on the mats in the dojo. “And just how do you explain that—“

“Kano, I’m trying,” Anastasia panted, her chest heaving and her face dripping with sweat. “Merlin is really powerful. I can’t just decide I want to look into his mind and make it happen—“

“Your brain does amazing acrobatics when it doesn't want to believe something,” Kano said, sedate as ever. “You can do just that. You are the most powerful psychic in the world— begin again.”

Kamilah’s fists tightened around her daggers as she lunged at her training dummy and stabbed the hell out of it, her eyes never leaving her wife and the tiny dictator a few feet away. She was of half a mind to throw her blade across the room and behead this imbecile for daring to speak to her beloved in such a way... but she knew she’d wind up in the dog house if she temporarily blinded Kano or outright killed him for pissing her off.

Not much angered her the way anybody speaking out of turn to or about her wife did. It simply wasn’t okay and she’d almost removed quite a few tongues for any slander at all. She wouldn’t stand for it... which was particularly odd for her. Her entire life, she hadn't cared like this if anyone had upset someone she loved or made them angry. No one had ever mattered like this. She’d found a place inside herself where she was safe, where no one could get to her. But Anastasia could — she had.

“You try reading his mind if you think its so easy,” Anastasia wheezed from her hands and knees on the mats.

“Only fools talk of mind-reading, Bloodkeeper. You know this already. The mind, however powerful and ancient it may be, is not simply a diary to be opened and leisurely skimmed over. An individual’s private thoughts and feelings are not carved on their brain to be chased and collected at your will. You must work for the answers that you seek.” He bent down and tilted Anastasia’s face up with a tiny hand so that her eyes were boring into his. “Merlin’s mind is an incredibly complex thing. There are layers. You must be gentle, you’re trying too hard— begin again.”

Anastasia growled softly. “Kano—“

“Again,” he repeated. 

“If I can just rest—“

“Merlin is not resting,” Kano interjected, crossing his arms. “Again.”

“You don’t know that—“

“I have no interest in seeing you drop your abilities at my feet like a sack of flour. I want to see what you can do with it, Bloodkeeper — which currently seems like not very much at all.” He paused. “Begin. Again.”

Kamilah’s stomach tightened and her eyes bled red. This foolish manchild was just begging to be maimed by her daggers.

“I want to see what you will become under the right circumstances,” he continued. “So you will focus. You will penetrate Merlin’s mind. And you will not stop until you have given your all.” He paused. “Now you will stop sulking and you will begin again.”

“Don’t,” Serafine whispered, stilling her with a hand on her shoulders as she began storming across the dojo to give this fool a piece of her mind.

“You are not seriously expecting me to stand by and say nothing whilst this idiot berates my wife like that—“

“Her abilities feed off of her emotions,” explained Serafine. “The more she feels, the stronger and more capable she will be. He’s intentionally provoking an emotional reaction from her because he is aware that to coddle her is to stifle her. I know it is hard to watch and that you think it borders on cruelty, but you mustn’t interrupt— even Anastasia is aware of what he is doing, Kamilah. She consented to it.”

She sighed. “But—“

“But nothing,” she interjected. “The hardest power to master is the power of yielding and Anastasia must yield to her emotions. She must channel them into everything we are currently trying to achieve and she must control them. You will be doing no one any favours by protesting Kano’s methods of teaching... Anastasia most of all. She trusts him to train her for a good reason, you must have some faith in him.”

Reluctantly, Kamilah nodded and heaved a sigh as she watched her wife centre herself and her abilities. Everybody currently training in the vampire gym below Ahmanet Financial seemed to freeze as the open plan space began to grow humid and staticky, even with the air conditioning on to keep things well ventilated.

It wasn’t often that anybody actually saw Anastasia training in person, and especially not with Kano himself. But given that it felt like their world was on the brink of another war, even the lowest ranking members of the clans needed to train and train well.

“Do not lose focus,” Kano ordered sharply. “Focus, Anastasia.”

“I’m focusing—“

“Let your abilities do the work naturally, stop being so forceful.” He crouched in front of her. “You are invading the mind of a wizard, not a vampire or a mere mortal. You must make adjustments to your normal strategy. Magic can be easily manipulated but only if you systematically try to weaken his mental defences at key points rather than simply obliterating them all at once like you would with a well trained vampire— it is much simpler to bend magic to your will than to break it.”

Anastasia’s entire body trembled and she bit down on her bottom lip so hard that it began to bleed, but her eyes remained closed for a good long moment before the Earth beneath their feet started to tremble slightly. It wasn’t an unusual thing at all for her abilities to cause small local natural phenomena to occur spontaneously.

“Excellent,” Kano breathed as he walked a slow circle around Anastasia as she began to levitate. “Keep going.”

The Bloodkeeper’s eyes slowly flickered open to reveal the glowing red soulless voids that replaced the usual twinkly glacial blue when she managed to fall into a trance. All around people who didn’t know well enough to sit themselves down began staggering sideways and grabbing onto equipment in a pitiful attempt to stay upright as more and more of Anastasia’s power spilled into the room.

Her strength was enormous. So enormous that it only seemed to grow stronger and stronger with each and every trance she fell into, and so was her burning need to kill Merlin. Kamilah couldn’t explain why she actually felt her wife’s desires as surely as if they were her own as she stared up at her in awe, but she’d felt this way on more than one occasion when she’d seen her like this. Like whatever was driving Anastasia was an actual need, like breathing, consuming her, almost taking her out of her body so that the rage and the passion was a separate entity entirely.

“In the earliest days of The Order, while you were still in Bavaria, you said you lived in Burghausen Castle for a time?,” Anastasia’s voice echoed inside her head.

She blinked, staring at her wife, who seemed to be so deep in a trance that she was incapable of communicating to the naked eye.

“No one else can hear me,” Anastasia quickly clarified. “You’re not going crazy— just think and I’ll hear you as surely as if we were speaking out loud.”

“This is new,” she thought back to her. “Brilliant, if you don’t mind me saying so— how exactly are you doing this?”

“I’m well aware I haven’t been using my abilities to their full extent,” she replied. “I still don’t know everything I’m capable of but this— this is something I figured out last night when you started having a nightmare. I was able to make it stop without waking you— I was going to tell you earlier but then we got dragged into the whole discussion about Dungeons & Dragons with Lily and I forgot. I don’t know if it works on anybody else yet.”

She mentally hummed in amusement. “Is that why I vividly recall having a sex dream about you last night?”

“No, if you had a sex dream about me that was just you being the ancient pervert I know and love,” Anastasia said. “I didn’t necessarily change your dream drastically at all. The only thing I did was let you hear my voice telling you that you were safe, I spoke out loud as well, but I let you feel it in a deeper layer of your subconscious mind and you settled yourself—“

“Annie, I love you dearly, but I am not following this conversation with much clarity at all.”

“Right,” Anastasia said sheepishly. “So... Burghausen Castle? What is his connection to Burghausen Castle?”

“It was one of The Order’s first bases,” she explained. “We lived there almost permanently between missions for a decade or so, I believe. Why?”

“I’m inside his head as I’m speaking to you and he keeps thinking about Burghausen Castle. Over and over again— I see you in a red velvet dress and I see Gaius and I feel his... lust and his jealousy. From the beginning it was his plan to murder Gaius but he never did,” Anastasia said slowly. “I can’t— for some reason I can’t rifle through the whole of his thought processes. I see only what he saw, hear what he heard, and feel what he felt whilst he is thinking about these memories. But there is nothing to give away—“

“An army, he always used to say, needs a head,” she interjected. “It needs one man to lead it, but I learned in time that if you give an army two leaders, you half its strength. Power always hungers for more power.”

Anastasia pulled out of her mind abruptly. She knew because she felt bereft. Starkly alone. The feeling was raw and ugly after having her there with her. She wanted her back, and that probably wasn't the most intelligent response... but there it was. For a few seconds that was all she could focus on before her wife crashed in a crumpled heap on the floor.

At that, she ran. She sent multiple members of her clan flying across the room and into walls as she grabbed them by the collars and threw them out of the way, using her elbows as deadly weapons to squeeze her way through the crowd of curious onlookers until she arrived right at Anastasia’s side.

“Annie?,” she said frantically, shaking her slight shoulders to see if it would rouse her. It didn’t. And when she pushed her onto her back and pushed her hair out of her face there was no missing the blood pouring from her nose like water from a tap.

“That is less than ideal,” Kano said sympathetically.

“Less than ideal?!,” she growled, drawing Anastasia into a protective embrace against her chest and using the only thing she had on her to attempt to stem the bleeding from her nose; her sleeve. “She’s knocked herself out trying to appease you, you utter fool!”

“She has knocked herself out pushing the boundaries of what she knows and nothing more,” Kano said evenly, reaching out to brush Anastasia’s cheek.

“You will keep your hands to yourself if you wish for them to remain attached to your body,” she muttered, her voice slightly muffled into the crown of Anastasia’s head as her crimson eyes bore into the child vampire. It was no secret she did not like him at the best of times, but right now she loathed him and she really would relieve him of a limb if he dared touch her wife when she wasn’t awake to consent to the touch. As innocent as it may have been, it panicked her a great deal to think of anybody touching her in this state.

“As you wish,” Kano sighed.

“This should help,” Serafine said as she appeared with a chilled bag of blood straight from the bank and handed it to her to press against Anastasia’s forehead. “She can drink it once she’s—“

Before she could finish, Anastasia started groaning and her eyes flickered open.

“You’re safe,” she whispered as she moved her hand slowly up and down the length of her trembling arm. “You’re alright. You’re with me. Everything’s alright.”

Anastasia nodded. “My head really hurts.”

She pressed a kiss to her brow and adjusted the makeshift cool-pack, her eyes flickering dangerously to Kano but her tone remaining soft as she spoke, “You’re done for the day. I’m taking you home.”

Anastasia’s eyes locked on Kano and she regarded him with a curious look. Her piercing blue gaze never wavering. His true age shone in his eyes as he stared right back at her. 

“Hard isn’t it,” he said, “doing three things simultaneously.”

“Ask me whatever it is that you want to ask me. We both hate making small talk,” Anastasia replied, her voice fragile.

He chuckled sympathetically. “Even though I am not powerful enough to penetrate your mind unless you let me in, I’m well aware you weren’t simply connecting to Merlin. The energy you were radiating was unlike anything I’ve ever felt— so my guess is that you were simultaneously inside someone else’s mind.”

Anastasia nodded once.

“That’s impossible, is it not?,” Serafine gasped, her eyes shooting between Kamilah and Anastasia. It didn’t need to be said whose mind she’d been in. “To penetrate one mind is a difficult feat but two at the same time— the strength that would take—“

“There’s a difference between something being difficult and something being impossible,” Kano interrupted, his gaze still locked on Anastasia. “But that leaves the third thing— the thing that tipped you over the edge. What were you doing, Anastasia?”

Anastasia blinked heavily and let out a raspy breath. “A vision. I couldn’t stave it off.”

“And?,” he prodded.

Anastasia looked around the room anxiously and saw all the concerned onlookers. “They need to leave right now. I’m not talking about this with an audience.”

Kamilah glanced over her shoulder, her eyes flaring a deeper shade of crimson. “You all have exactly thirty seconds to vacate my property—“ and that was all it took for pandemonium to break out. People started fleeing the building like it was on fire, like they were running for their lives. Most people were smart enough that they dove into the stairwell, but the lazier few sped off and practically threw themselves into the elevators.

“I don’t know if I should be impressed or horrified that it took you all of ten words to accomplish that,” Serafine snorted.

She shrugged. “What is the use of cultivating a terrifying reputation if you cannot wield it to your heart’s desire?”

Anastasia reached up and took the blood bag from her head and began to sip at it slowly. “It was— I don’t understand what it was that I saw.”

“How so?,” prodded Kano.

“I saw the future, which isn’t in itself unusual, but—“ she cut herself off abruptly and a violent shiver coursed through her frail body.

She drew her further into her arms and slipped a hand into her messy ginger hair, sensing that she wasn’t okay. When she spoke, her voice was far more gentle than most people would ever expect from her, “Mmm? What happened? What did you see?”

“Jax,” Anastasia whimpered. “I saw Jax and— there was fire and I was in pain. More pain than when Gaius stabbed me and I was forcing myself not to scream but it hurt so bad and—“

“Annie, my love, try to steady your breathing,” she soothed, her thumb brushing her cheek.

“It was a prophetic vision, Kami,” Anastasia said quickly, a wild look appearing in her glacial eyes. “It’s impossible... but it was— he’s gone. Jax is gone— He’s really gone in a way he can’t come back from but he was here and—“

“Steady your mind, Bloodkeeper,” Kano whispered. “Worry only means that you will suffer twice. Breathe. Centre yourself.”

“I think I’m going to die,” Anastasia whispered. “It’s my death— my real death. I’m going to die.”

“Nobody is going to take you from me,” she said firmly, holding her tighter. “You’re not going anywhere... not again.” She screwed her eyes shut tight and buried her face into her hair, remembering how it had felt to lose her the first time. “I’d move heaven and earth to protect you.”

“I know you would,” Anastasia sniffled, “but I— I’m scared. Whatever this is... it’s big enough that I don’t know if I can control it. I don’t know how and I don’t know when or where, but for him to die, for him to truly die, I’m going to have to tear myself apart in the process of killing him.”

“May I?,” Kano said as he hovered his hand above her head.

Anastasia nodded and consciously lowered her mental defences, letting him inside her head. 

With bated breath Kamilah held her tight enough that her bones would’ve shattered like glass if she were mortal. She may have held no trust in this old fool but Anastasia did, and that was good enough.

Kano placed a small hand on her wrist. “You are very frightened... but not in the way that one would expect.”

“Of dying? No. I’m not scared to die.” Anastasia waved her hand dismissively as if the idea of being afraid of death was absurd. “I know there’s no changing my fate. This is written in the stars the same way my Turning was. When the time comes I’ll unleash my power and do what I must without a second thought.” 

Kamilah’s stomach started churning as she looked between Kano and Anastasia, and an equally panicked Serafine.

“You worry for Kamilah,” he said, his eyebrows lifting. “You fear for her even more than you are afraid of the dying itself.”

“There’s no need to worry for me because he’s not going to kill you,” she said defensively, shaking her head. “You’re not dying. What— Why— Don’t even start with that—“

“Choosing not to read the writing on the wall does not make it disappear,” Kano whispered, his shoulders slumping forwards. 

“There must be something—“

“There’s not,” Anastasia said quickly, cutting Serafine off. “This is one of those times you can tell yourself that I have a say in this all you want, but really I don’t have a choice. For whatever reason, I’m once again the only one strong enough to fight him head on and stand a chance of winning... only this time isn’t like how it was with Rheya. Win or lose, I won’t survive using the amount of power it will take, the only thing I can control is if I take him out with me or not... and if I don’t or if he kills me before I can strike...I hate to be this blunt but nobody will stand a chance—“

“No,” Kamilah said firmly. “I— I simply will not allow it. No— You are not going on some ridiculous suicide mission and you are delusional if you think for one moment I will sit back and watch this happen!”

Anastasia reached up and caressed her cheek, knowing that when she was frightened that she often tried to cling to whatever sense of control she could find. Even if that control existed only in her own mind, it was safety.

“There must be some other way,” she snapped. “He may be powerful but with a single strike to the neck I could slice his head clean off and—“

“Sweetheart, just because there seems to be alternatives that sound good on paper doesn’t mean they apply to me,” Anastasia said softly. “My life has always been driven by something bigger than me, something I don’t understand—“

“If you intend to kill yourself you’re going to have to kill me too,” she murmured on the verge of a breakdown, “because if you think for one single second that I can bear a life without you—“

“Kami—“

“You are my wife, yesterday, today, and forever,” she whispered. “I made the decision mere decades ago that you were my life. My everything. You were with me in my dreams, my lover, my best friend, and confidant. Nothing will ever change that. My heart beats only for you.” She framed her face in her hands. “I don’t know how to live in a world without you, nor do I have any desire to do so.”

“You’re going to be alright, love,” Anastasia said quietly. “I look at you, and I see the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth. Inside and out, you are beautiful. I know you better than anyone else could ever know you, because I can see into your thoughts and read your memories. The very light in you, your tremendous capacity for loving, humbles me.” She kissed her brow. “I promise, you’ll be alright.”

Her breath constricted and she shot to her feet in a panic and began to slowly back away. “No,” she growled, shaking her head. “I will sooner kill this imbecile with my own bare hands than lose you— I am not losing you again, do you understand me?”

And with that she turned on her heels and stormed off towards the elevator, ignoring Anastasia’s pleas to stay. It wasn’t often she stormed off so petulantly... but what else was she supposed to do? How else was she supposed to react?

A less selfish person might’ve considered the fact that for The Bloodkeeper, her duty must always come first, she thought. A less selfish person might’ve noticed that freewill was often little more than an illusion where she was concerned, her each and every action always seeming to barrel towards some great world-changing destiny that would print her name across the book of history. A less selfish person might’ve realised upon falling in love with her that there would be times that the ancient power bound to her blood would have to be used for the greater good... regardless of the cost.

Anastasia often described herself as nothing more than a flesh and blood vessel for this power. A tool to carry knowledge and unlock secrets, to mould the world to what it should’ve always been — and it had always angered Kamilah to hear her speak of herself as if she were nothing. As if she didn’t matter. 

She mattered a great deal more than her destiny or the whole damn circus she found herself bloodbound to due to nothing more than an accident of birth. 

The whole world could go to hell as far as she was concerned. She’d sooner see everybody else die a horrendous death at Merlin’s hands than be parted from her Annie. It might’ve been an unbearably selfish outlook, but there it was.

She’d lost too much in her life to lose her Annie, too.

She simply would not stand for it or entertain the idea for a single second. She wasn’t prepared to lose her and that was all there was to it.

Love took many forms, wore many faces, but when it was this real, when it touched your very soul, you knew it and you embraced it. A love like this was stronger than destiny. A love like this was stronger than anger. A love like this was stronger than all artificial divisions that existed in the world — and stronger than death itself.

People often said that a person took nothing with them when they died. That was, quite frankly, bullshit, Kamilah decided. She had given Anastasia her heart long ago and she would never get it back— she never wanted it back. It was safe in her keeping, where it would remain for as long as she could bear to draw breath in a world that continued to ask too much of her.

~~~~ 2020 - New York, NY ~~~~

“Uh, sweetheart, not that I don’t love that you’re taking Covid-19 very seriously... but what in the ever-loving-fuck are you doing?,” the groggy mortal laying in the ancient vampire’s bed groaned, her accent so rich that Kamilah’s heart-rate doubled at the irritated mumbling.

“They say a fever is one of the earliest symptoms— and your temperature is one degree warmer than it should be for a healthy mortal in her prime!,” she practically shrieked as she withdrew the brand new hospital grade thermometer she’d invested in when the pandemic had started from her ear. “Does your throat hurt? Can you smell me?”

Anastasia cracked an eye open. “Can I smell you? What kind of question is that—“

“They say the virus takes away a mortal’s sense of smell,” she huffed, pressing her hand against her forehead and her cheeks to feel for a fever. Anastasia groaned and tried to pull the covers over her face, but Kamilah held her still with no trouble at all. 

“We went to bed like two hours ago— Kami this is so rude, let me sleep,” Anastasia whined petulantly.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she pouted at her grumpy girlfriend. “Can you smell me?”

“I mean... I don’t fucking know? I’m a mortal! We don’t smell people from a mile away— Kamilah Sayeed if you put your armpit in my face to see if I can smell your deodorant you will be in serious trouble.”

“I’m not wearing perfume so my armpit is a very logical place!,” she laughed. “And how did you even know—“

“You’re so extra behind closed doors, that’s how!,” Anastasia giggled as she whacked her with the top pillow from her side of the bed.

She rolled her eyes, an amused smile twitching at her lips. “You didn’t live through The Black Death, Yellow Fever, Spanish Flu, Asian Flu, or AIDS, or any of the other deadly pandemics or epidemics that have occurred in the last two thousand years— so forgive me for being cautious!”

“If I start hacking up a lung or feeling like I’m about to keel over, you’ll be the first to know.”

Her brow furrowed. “Your temperature is still one degree higher than it should be though.”

“I’ve been hanging out here with you, avoiding public places, and doing my work over Zoom— in a skyscraper that you’re the only apartment in and all of your employees are currently working from home. Literally the only people I socialise with are vampires and you’re all immune. I’m good.”

She hummed disapprovingly, her hands testing her skin again. “You’re still warm though. Perhaps it’s not enough— we should go to Adrian’s cabin where there is nobody around for miles—“

“Where the water pressure is so weak neither of us can wash our hair properly and I’ll have to listen to you bitching about the great outdoors every time you look out a window?,” Anastasia snorted. “I’d rather get Covid, thanks.”

Her eyes widened. “If you get Covid after saying that I will be in no way amused.”

The mortal moistened her lips and lifted her lashes to look into her piercing dark eyes, the shock of blue causing her breath to catch in her throat. There was a mixture there. Happiness. Innocence. Desire. Love, perhaps...

“I’m a huge baby when I’m sick by the way, so you better hope I don’t get Covid because I will be pain in your ass—“

“Well thank god I consider you in my ass to be a rather wonderful experience,” she deadpanned.

Anastasia started giggling and whacked her with the pillow once again. “Kami!”

She shrugged and bent down over her to kiss her brow, and then Anastasia’s mouth claimed hers in a kiss that was as brazen and unforgiving, as terrifying and tantalising as the electricity between them. Kamilah fell into the destruction before her, into her and the carnal feelings that existed between them that she knew would tear her to pieces even as the pleasure of it put her back together again.

She couldn’t help but be concerned for Anastasia’s wellbeing. This mortal was her mortal and she — though she hadn’t dared admit it yet — was very much in love with her in a way that she’d never loved anybody else before. It was both innocent and scandalously salacious. In only a short time Anastasia had become very precious to her... and against her better judgement, she actually adored this sweet mortal.

In her whole life, she’d never adored anything or anyone.

She was Kamilah Sayeed... the mere word ‘adore’ hadn’t been in her vocabulary until stumbling across this woman who’d ran through her dreams for centuries. But she really did adore Anastasia.

She’d only just found her and she was not prepared to lose her so soon. 

She didn’t think she’d ever be prepared to lose her, actually.

“You’re wearing my Laniege berry lip mask,” Anastasia murmured against her lips. “I can smell it and I can taste it. No Covid.”

She snorted, licking her lips. She had the faint taste of sass and sweet. Lethal and home. The combination was deadly to a woman like her.

“Perhaps you should kiss me again, just to be absolutely certain.”

Kamilah had never imagined a kiss to be so innocent and so wanton at the same time. Her whole body trembled as Anastasia smirked and drew her back in, her thumbs stroking gently at her cheeks, and she felt as if she stood on the cusp of something wonderful. That if she was just brave enough to step over the edge, she’d experience the most exhilarating years of her life.

“I know I may not be the most forthcoming with my thoughts or my emotions,” she said as they broke apart and she lay back down on her side of her bed and drew her mortal into her arms as gently as she could manage. “And that my constant assessing you for symptoms of this virus may come across as being neurotic and somewhat overbearing.” She paused and slowly brushed a sleep-ruffled strand of coppery hair out of her face for her. “But I— I just— It has been quite some time since I’ve cared for anybody’s wellbeing besides Adrian’s and you’re a mortal— not that that means you ought to be babied or I believe you to be incapable of taking care of yourself. I just... I wish to be careful with you because I... care for you a great deal.”

“I know you do,” Anastasia said softly, moving so that her brow was rested against hers on her pillow. “The only reason I let you coddle me at all is because I care for you a great deal too, and I can see that it calms you down to have physical proof that I’m alright. Doesn’t it?”

She nodded sharply, the tight gesture barely noticeable but there all the same, slightly taken aback from the observation. People often read her wrong... and she wasn’t the best at expressing her care or her anxiety without it somehow getting lost in translation somewhere between her heart and her mouth. Her fear could often come out as anger. Her attempts at caring about somebody’s wellbeing could come out as her being overly controlling. Even in her mortal life it hadn’t been often that people had been able to see through that.

“You keep surprising me,” she concluded.

“Mhm?”

“How is it that a twenty-two year old mortal can understand me so well? Can make me feel... seen... perhaps for the first time ever.” She entwined her fingers through the spaces between Anastasia’s. “Can make me feel safe enough to — how did you so eloquently put it? — be extra enough in her presence to consider the smelling of armpits a conclusive medical examination?”

A quiet giggle left Anastasia’s lips and she stroked the length of her thumb with hers. “What can I say? I’ve never been like the other mortals.”

“No,” she whispered. “You’re certainly not.”

Anastasia couldn’t stay awake for much longer and Kamilah didn’t blame her. She’d seen to it that her mortal was made love to so thoroughly that sleep was the only option afterwards. She, however, couldn’t bring herself to fall asleep just as quickly.

She lay there with her brow still rested against her’s and she watched her sleeping, her fingertips lightly tracing the chiselled lines of her jaw and cheekbone. How strange and wonderful it was to not feel alone. How strange and wonderful it was to feel so safe in somebody’s arms.

She had never trusted a woman — or anyone, for that matter — to sleep close to her, let alone in the same bed. In her bed, of all places. And yet, already, she was completely relaxed with her.

Her courage humbled her. The immense trust it took for a strong willed and highly independent mortal to allow herself to fall asleep in the arms of a creature who needed her blood to survive, who craved mortal blood every moment of her existence, was astonishing for a woman like her. It was a subtle but true power exchange between them and Kamilah loved that. Even craved it.

With the pad of her thumb she brushed the sleeping mortal’s lower lip and down onto her chin, then moved her hand to lightly pet the wispy baby hairs framing her temple. Anastasia sighed breathily in her sleep and the gentlest smile settled on her face, though she didn’t stir.

“I didn't think it was possible to feel anything real for anybody ever again. I just couldn't. I tried, but nothing was there. I knew I was capable of loving in some capacity because I love Adrian fiercely. With everything in me. But what a woman feels for a woman, 'the' woman, eluded me until you. Until I saw you,” she whispered so softly her words were barely audible at all. “Can I keep you?”

Anastasia didn’t answer, but Kamilah never stilled the hand gently tickling at the roots of her hair. 

She knew it was a horribly selfish thing to wish an immortal life on anybody. To curse anybody to wander the earth for eternity in darkness... but she wasn’t sure what she would do if Anastasia decided she wanted to grow old with grace and cease to exist after only a few decades of life. She may have only had her for a short while, but how could she face a life without her now that she knew her?

Love her whilst she’s here, she thought. 

She’s here now and if a mortal lifespan is all you ever get with her, it will be enough, she rationalised.

She sniffled, and because she felt so weak at the thought of anything ever harming this woman or snuffing out her fragile mortal life, she drew her further into her arms and tucked her safely beneath her chin where no harm could come to her. Because she felt so weak, she pressed her lips to her crown, searching for something to make her stop running for once in her painfully long life, to make her forget everything looming on the horizon and lurking outside of her home. 

She didn't pretend to know what the future had in store. She simply closed her eyes tight and let her arms wrap around her sweet mortal. The warmth that came from her body made her feel at home, as if, somehow, this was exactly where she had always belonged.

As if, somehow, she was the reason she’d lived this long at all.

Anastasia was hers. The one. The only. She didn't know how she knew it, but she did know that nothing in her whole life had ever been truer.


	6. it wanders lost and wounded, this heart that i misplaced.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; Hymn For The Missing by Red.

~~~~ Brittany, France ~~~~

“I know I misheard you,” Kamilah growled as she cast the leafy boundary of Paimpont Forest a withering glance before turning to glare at Adrian. “I know you did not just suggest I store my wife in your man bag.”

“It’s a knapsack,” Adrian corrected her as he tugged on the black straps of what was quite clearly a very ugly man bag. “I just don’t think it is practical to begin the hike to our first campsite carrying an urn in your arms if you wish to make it there and have a tent pitched before sunrise. The forest is very thick and you were stubborn enough to refuse a pair of sensible hiking boots like the rest of us.”

She glanced down at her timeless Gucci Tripp Boots and let out an indignant puff of air as her eyes then roamed over the horrendous looking monstrosities gracing the feet of her family. “Hiking boots are for mortals— and you should just be thankful I downgraded my Roger Vivier’s to a pair of Gucci’s.”

“At least your Roger Vivier’s were flat combat boots, you old fool,” Serafine quipped from where she was kneeling down on the grass fixing the contents of her own equally terrible looking backpack. “I’ve listened to you complain about heels for centuries and now that sensible shoes are an option, you wear heels and complain about reliable footwear.”

“I am me.” She rolled her eyes. “I do not wear anything less than high fashion, and since I did not see a Sak’s Fifth Avenue at that outdoor goods store I made the executive decision to not compromise on my brand— now if anybody else has any more complaints—“

“You’re literally wearing a Calvin Klein blazer,” snorted Lily. 

“It’s Balmain, actually,” she corrected her, “and it has enough pockets inside to allow me to arm myself to the point of being a small tank.”

“We’re going hiking and we’re gonna be camping for a few days at least,” her protégé laughed. 

“Whilst you three may need to dawn these ridiculous mortal mountaineering costumes in order to do what we came to do, I feel no such need. Anything you can do in your cheap boots and athleisure wear, I can do better in a perfectly tailored ensemble.” She paused. “Now... shall we go or shall we continue discussing our fashion preferences?”

Everybody laughed but made no more absurd comments before they took off into the unknown, led by nothing more than a paper map with the exact co-ordinates Anastasia had written down in her diary marked on it with a Sharpie. The trees were thick enough that their phones wouldn’t work and their GPS would become all but useless... which was about as far from ideal as it was possible for someone who hated the great outdoors as Kamilah did to tolerate.

If anybody had to come across her, gliding through the thick underbrush and winding her way around ancient trees, they wouldn’t have noticed how much she loathed being there, though. Her face was almost entirely blank and she kept silent unless she was spoken to directly, focused entirely on the task ahead.

No, it wasn’t her lean, fox-like face anybody would’ve noticed. Or the chocolate curtain of shiny hair that hung halfway between her shoulders and breasts. It wasn’t the finely tailored black velvet blazer she wore, hugging her lean shoulders. It was the way she walked. The confident way she waltzed through the unfamiliar and unfavourable terrain like she owned the place. She didn’t saunter. She didn’t amble. She acted like she stood at the centre of the world, and let the other people buzz around her. Her entire stance was straight and sure.

‘If the world were a black hole, The Bloodkeeper would be the helpless star being sucked into oblivion,’ that odd voice in her head muttered as she walked. ‘It is an oblivion she craves... as Phampira is the one who created it. Blood calls to blood.’

She looked around frantically, only to see that the others seemed entirely unperturbed by the ghostly voice.

‘The priestess asked her for it. For the blood, for the rust, for the sin. She didn’t want the pearls other women talked about, or the fine marble of palaces, or even the roses in the mouth of servants. She wanted life— and deep down she wanted darkness, she wanted the power of the goddess,’ the siren voice whined on the wind. ‘So she grabbed her love and ran away to a land of death, where she reigned and people whispered that he had been dragged. She told the goddess that she had changed. She’d tell her, the red on her lips was wine. Out of an entire kingdom the priestess would kneel only to one, they’d call her Queen, they’d call her Mercy.’

“Kamilah?,” Serafine said. “Are you alright?”

“Are you really trying to tell me you don’t hear that?,” she whispered as she diverged from the trail, only to have her hand yanked by Serafine.

“Hear what? Kamilah, it’s this way—“

“No,” she breathed, pulling her hand out of her vice-like grip. “I— the voice is coming from this way.”

“Kamilah,” Adrian said. “I don’t think—“

“Mon Dieu!,” Serafine breathed, honing her abilities onto Kamilah’s mind. “She’s really hearing something— it’s not just grief or exhaustion as we feared—“

“Yo, imma give this a hell nah on everybody’s behalf,” Lily interjected. “We ain’t detouring cause the creepy ass voices in Kamilah’s head told us so! That’s like, horror movie 101: if a homie is hearing voices, you do not follow their commands and you perform an exorcism!”

“Lily,” Adrian snorted.

“What?!,” Lily shrieked, her voice echoing through the trees. “Have you ever seen a horror movie? The queer character of colour always dies first and if you haven’t noticed, while this family is full homo all the time, you’re the only white person here. If we follow these creepy ass voices the three of us are done for.”

“That’s— that’s a valid point,” Adrian conceded.

“This isn’t a horror movie,” Kamilah shot back as she glanced over her shoulder at Adrian, Lily, and Serafine. “And I’m not asking you to come with me, by all means go on ahead and I’ll meet you at camp... but something is telling me that I have to follow whatever it is that I’m hearing.”

She stared off into the trees, her expression doing nothing to give away what she was thinking or feeling. Her eyes, however, were haunted. She needed to go. She didn't even know why the compulsion was so strong, but that need was relentless, bone deep. Soul deep.

“Anastasia wouldn’t—“

“Annie isn’t here,” Kamilah snapped, cutting Lily off mid sentence. “What she would do or what she would not do— none of us can say with any certainty at all. Anything we think of is nothing more than stories, you know. The essence of who and what she was, but they are not the real thing. They are not her— All this time I’ve been thinking, ‘What would Annie do?’ And today, every time I thought it, I just didn’t care what Annie would do... because I know deep down she never looked anywhere out with her own heart for guidance or governance. So today I’ve just done what I would do, and I intend to continue that way.”

“There are ten hours until sunrise,” Serafine breathed. “We have time— I say we follow her.”

“I’m in,” Adrian nodded.

All eyes fell to Lily and she threw her hands up in exasperation. “If y’all get me killed, I will come back as a poltergeist and haunt the fuck outta each one of you for eternity. Having sex? Prepare to have a lamp thrown at your head and for your Spotify to start playing Baby Shark. In a business meeting? I’ll delete your presentations and play the dirtiest videos on PornHub. Hell, I’ll even fuck with your belts so that your pants fall down in public every time you set foot out the door—“

“Consider us forewarned,” Kamilah deadpanned as she turned on her heels and started walking.

‘Know that her bed is warm and immortal hearts are no longer cold, know never has the world been better than when she was here. Do not send flowers, she will throw them in a river of blood. Flowers are for the dead, that’s what the mortals say. What was life will crumble. What was form, will now fall away. Mortal chains unbind and the soul will roam free. May she find her way to the ancestors. May she find her path to the gods. May her bravery and courage be reminders in song and story,’ the voice whispered, haunting her every step. ‘May she carry her birthright. Come, Kamilah Sayeed, and wander no more when the universe ignites her, and the sky shall bleed red when the heir of the goddess returns.’

She swallowed thickly and held the urn closer to her chest, her eyes drifting up towards the night sky as she descended the steep embankment from the trail that was littered with decomposing leaves and fauna. Living in Manhattan most of the time, she missed the stars the most... and though she would never voice it aloud, she appreciated the sight of them as they walked. They gave off their light, completely unaware or heedless of the life and death taking place beneath them. It didn’t matter to them whether they got Anastasia back. Or they didn’t. Whether the whole world burnt. In the end, they’d still be there. Constant and true.

“Is this how you felt?,” she said inside her own head, looking down at the urn. “Hearing things nobody else could? How did you bear it?”

There was no answer, of course, but in the space between blinks, she could have sworn she saw things swooping past her in swift, vicious circles, hovering above her, waiting, waiting, waiting. She heard whispers... some of them oddly familiar... but she couldn’t place where she’d heard them before.

Instead of overreacting at the overwhelming new sensations, she pretended they didn’t exist and carried on walking. The others were oblivious to the symphony of muffled conversations and distant laughter carried through the trees on the gentle breeze. But she said nothing, not wanting to scare them into turning back.

Though try as she might, she couldn’t stop her heart from racing. She clenched her sweaty palms and continued toward the source of the noise. It took a while for the phantom sound of flapping wings and laughter to fade, but by the time they reached the precipice of a rocky canyon that didn’t appear on the map it was the very last thing on her mind.

“There’s a cave,” Lily whispered, pointing down the steep rock face. “Tell me we aren’t really gonna go exploring this damn cave.”

Ignoring the question, she turned to Adrian and swallowed thickly as a hand nervously fiddled with the leather strap of her all black Louis Vuitton backpack. “We’re going to have to climb down. My bag is full of diaries and Kristina’s papers—“

“Say no more,” he nodded, reaching out slowly for the urn.

She hesitated for a moment, utterly frozen as she clutched Anastasia’s remains like her life depended on it. She hadn’t allowed anybody to so much as lay a finger on the urn since sweeping the ashes into it... and now she was about to trust somebody else to climb down a rock face and simultaneously keep it safe.

Though she trusted Adrian completely... this was different. 

This was her Annie.

To trust another person to protect all that remained of the love of her life... it was almost unfathomable. 

“Promise me,” she said tightly, “that you will not allow anything to happen to her...”

“You have my word,” he said gently. 

She inhaled a sharp breath and nodded, the gesture small and barely noticeable, and steeled herself to hand over the most precious thing in her keeping. If anybody noticed how her hands were shaking as she handed it over and watched as Adrian secured it in his backpack, surrounded by a waterproof jacket, diaries, and smaller bits of camping gear, then they didn’t mention it. Though Serafine rested a hand on her shoulder and gave a tight squeeze, her hand tight over her joint, trying to tell her without words, that no matter what, they would always be there for her.

It was already baffling to think that all that remained of Anastasia could fit in the small urn. The woman who’d changed the entire world, who’d brought the light back into her life. But seeing her zipped up in that god forsaken bright orange North Face man bag with tacky black straps and plastic buckles that fastened across the chest was a hideous feeling.

She’d searched the world over for her perfect fit, the woman holding the other half of her soul, the light to her darkness. Knowing that so little was left of her— actually seeing it... it made her nauseous. It reminded her of the power that had ripped her small body apart and transformed it into its new shape. 

Serafine said her name, but she didn’t answer. She didn’t even hear her. Her eyes locked on that bloody orange bag as her breaths constricted and her mind wandered to things she wished that she didn’t have to remember.

There lived a second, less than a second, a mere shimmer of time between the last ounce of power leaving Anastasia’s body and her withering away to a pile off ash on the bloodstained temple floor when her mind had been without a home, no body to call its own. When she hadn’t necessarily been alive anymore, but hadn’t yet been fully dead. A tantalising moment trapped in the between, neither here nor there.

That single moment when her power had spiralled around her dying body like the most powerful tornado the world had ever seen, staining everything it touched an awful shade of red. God, how she hoped existence had been painless in there, nothing but formlessness beyond the limits of her own understanding. A secret place, that contained nothing but the essence of self, a lost self. 

How much had she suffered? She wondered.

It had to have hurt, she concluded. Her abilities had practically burnt her alive from the inside out. There was no way she hadn’t suffered.

She swallowed thickly as Adrian pulled the zipper on his bag closed, her mind stuck on the pain her wife must have felt. Even if it had been the worst pain in the world, Anastasia was noble-hearted enough that she’d have forced herself not to scream, as not to distress her anymore than the situation already was.

God, had she been in a torturous amount of pain and kept quiet for her wellbeing?

Her breaths were coming quicker now, her eyes still never leaving the bag. She clenched her hands tightly at her sides and the muscles in her jaw locked to the point her teeth began to ache. The impulse was to lunge forwards and grab the bag... but she somehow managed to restrain herself. Though her mind was still relentlessly focusing on the pain she was convincing herself her wife must’ve suffered with no proof either way.

What had she thought of in those final moments? 

Had she gone to a happy place inside her head? In the fire of so much pain, had she found a whisper of wherever that happy place was? It’s ghost, its echo, and from that echo had she withdrawn? Had she achieved more understanding about things that nobody never hoped to be able to understand at all?

“Kamilah,” Serafine said firmly, drawing her attention as she grasped both of her shoulders and stood right in front of her face. “Try to match my breathing, mon amie. You’re hyperventilating—“

“She forced herself not to scream,” she rasped between her sharp little gasps for air. “It hurt and she— She forced herself not to scream—“

“You don’t know that,” Serafine soothed. “We don’t know if it caused her any pain—“

“With the... way Merlin was,” she ran her hand through her hair and did her best to steady her breathing, “...screaming? Of course it— It hurt.”

“You are either right or wrong. Worrying will not make it any better,” Serafine said gently. “Worrying yourself into a panic about what she may or may not have felt will not bring her back.”

She nodded and began to pace along the cliff’s edge. Forwards and then back, like a deranged caged animal as her breaths slowly evened themselves out.

“Why don’t we switch bags for now?,” Adrian suggested. “You carry mine and I’ll carry yours. That way you’ll know she’s safe in your keeping and you can just focus on our task.”

At that she stilled and cast him an exhausted glance. “Would you mind?”

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have offered if it wasn’t sincere— I know you trust me but this is big. Your desire to protect her is as strong as ever... and I think for your own mental wellbeing’s sake, having her in your charge may be the best thing.”

She thanked Adrian quietly for understanding as she fastened the offensively bright backpack to her back, clicking the chest straps over her breasts to ensure that it wouldn’t fall off halfway down the cliff.

Whilst she’d never been the biggest climbing enthusiast, she practically sprinted down the steep rock face once the abseiling gear Adrian had insisted they purchase from the outdoor goods store had been fixed in place. This unmarked part of the forest had to have been nearly as deep as The Grand Canyon... so the fact that it wasn’t on their mortal maps was baffling.

Surely the mortals would’ve turned this into an Instagram photography hotspot at the first available opportunity.

“We’re really going into this dark ass cave with no idea what kinda fucked up shit is waiting in there or any idea where it leads,” Lily muttered. “I ain’t playing here, if I die one of y’all has to keep my Twitter going. My life goal was to get a Donald Trump style ban—“

“Lily, you routinely tweet conspiracies and information you hacked from the US government. Anastasia and I have had to alter memories to stop you from going to federal prison multiple times now— do you honestly expect us to continue hacking the US government and tweeting conspiracy theories about public figures being lizard people?”

“If I didn’t interrupt your orgasms or join in that night you were getting railed by like four dudes at once the time I ran outta Red Bull and figured I’d just steal from you rather than buy it,” Lily huffed, “then you can do me this solid. David Icke was a fan of me... my tweets are that good.”

“Excuse me?,” Adrian snorted. “Four men at once?”

Serafine shrugged as she unclipped the caribeener between herself and the ropes. “It was a whole thing— you really mustn’t ask too many questions you do not want the answer to.”

Lily snorted. “I’ll never look at you the same way after the hearing the guy with the pervy 70s moustache call you daddy— that was some seriously fucked up top shit that I’m kinda horrified that I’m actually stanning.”

“Don’t act coy,” Serafine scolded. “The times that I’ve topped you, you’ve called me far more scandalous names than that.”

At that, Kamilah actually laughed. She laughed genuinely for the first time in days.

“See, even Kamilah knows you are full of it,” chuckled Serafine as she looped her arm through her’s and they all began walking through the mossy canyon towards the cave. Her dark eyes then settled on Adrian and sparkled with mirth. “And do not even get me started on the names I’ve heard from you in the thralls of passion!”

Adrian flushed scarlet and immediately began sweating profusely. “You are quite skilled— It— I— A name or two may have been called when you— good god, woman, this is witchcraft!”

That only elicited another laugh from Kamilah. 

“Don’t even get me started on the things you used to call me,” she muttered to Serafine as they walked. “You have no right to tease anybody for the names they wind up screaming.”

Serafine sighed dramatically. “I admit, you are the only one who has ever managed to turn me into a willing bottom. Anastasia was a very, very lucky woman.”

“Just to be an asshole whilst I was in a dry spell she once text me to lemme know she’d been ordered to wear those panties with a vibrator in them to work,” Lily chuckled, “and she was being topped from afar in the middle of important meetings. Then she lemme know you’d taken her to lunch and wound up tying her up with her own goddamn panties and fucking her in middle of the restaurant whilst she used her abilities to fuck with people’s minds and the security cameras so that nobody would even notice the fact y’all were eating pussy instead of pasta!”

She snorted at the memory a genuine smile tickling at the corners of her lips. Feeling her wife’s body beneath her was the closest to heaven that she should ever come. Her skin, her mouth, her body, her sweet, sweet moans, and her blood… she had wanted them all. She had always wanted quite a bit more, actually. Since she was already damned, she had aimed to have all of her. Had strived to see that look of ecstasy on her face over and over again when she was buried deep inside her and she was screaming her name.

“I walked away from that lunch unable to feel my legs and somehow wearing said vibrating underwear... then I wound up being utterly tormented for the rest of the day. I was the lucky one.”

“Y’all need Jesus,” Lily snorted, shaking her head. “I mean, what are the chances that the two freakiest people in the world would find each other? That’s the goddamn witchcraft.”

A soft smile settled on her lips. The mortals often believed that all vampires had the ability to control the mind of the object of their desires. Whilst that wasn’t true and Kamilah could claim no such powers, the vampire that she was didn’t just stop at her fangs.

In a way, she had controlled Anastasia’s mind, controlled her body. She’d been trusted in a way so intimate that few people would ever truly understand it. Trusted to worship her. Trusted to pleasure her, to punish her. To play mind games with her that they’d both found absolutely thrilling. To do things and take her to places that many people would find the mere mention of horrifying.

To know that the best person she’d ever known considered her worth that trust... worth that pure and undeniable form of love... that thought gave her the strength she needed to carry on. To trust herself as absolutely as Anastasia had trusted her, even though she had absolutely no idea what she was doing as they drew to a stop at the gaping mouth of the cave.

Staring the abyss in the face, she thought. As it so turned out, it really did seem like the abyss was staring back.

“Are we really doing this?,” Adrian gulped.

Kamilah exhaled a shuddering breath and nodded resolutely, withdrawing both of the daggers holstered just inside her blazer. It wasn’t like she wanted to wander blindly into the dark... but there was no other choice. If she wanted her beloved back, she had to be brave. She had to feel the fear and do it anyway.

Lily cracked her knuckles. “There’s no proof we’ll find anything in there. Our girl’s co-ordinates don’t match up to where we are now.”

“Sometimes it takes more courage to believe in what you can’t see.” Kamilah said quietly, repeating something Anastasia had said to her after meeting Demetrius, and then she looked into her dark eyes. “Because anyone can believe in what’s already been proven.”

Serafine nodded only once and smiled nervously. “She’d be proud of you.”

“I know,” she whispered, swallowing thickly. “I know.”

And with that, she stepped into the darkness. Leading her family to god only knew what or where, and as she did so the strange voice whispered, ‘The cave you fear to enter holds the secrets that you seek.’

~~~~ Ten Weeks Earlier - New York, NY ~~~~

“Kami, what the fuck?,” Anastasia shrieked as Kamilah staggered into their living room and collapsed onto her knees, clutching an infected Feral bite on her shoulder that she’d received whilst clearing a hoard of the beasts that had been strategically set loose in the blocks that surrounded Times Square beneath a familiar mark glistening in the sky.

The Bloodkeeper shot to her feet and slammed her laptop shut, immediately ending the Zoom call she’d been on with the mortal presidents and prime minister’s of the world she believed to be most at risk of attack. Anastasia was kneeling at her side in mere seconds, drawing her into her arms.

“You should,” she flinched and couched up a mouthful of blood and bile, “see the other guy.”

Anastasia’s eyes watered profusely as she tore into her own wrist with her fangs with such force she practically ripped flesh from bone and severed every important vein and artery in the vicinity of the bite. “Open your mouth for me, love, it’s going to be okay.”

She coughed weakly and the pain made everything down her left arm begin to tingle. She wasn’t entirely sure how she’d made it home or really what was happening at all, the necrotic tissue pushing a deadly infection through her bloodstream and making her drowsy.

“Annie—“

“Drink,” Anastasia soothed, pressing her wrist to her lips. “I’m gonna make the pain stop but you have to drink for me, alright?”

A soft whine escaped her lips and was muffled into the open wound on Anastasia’s wrist as she summoned the strength to do what she was asked. That powerful blood stained her lips a dark shade of crimson and trickled down her chin as she swallowed mouthful after mouthful, healing the once-incurable infection with each sip she took.

Anastasia held her tightly and soothingly petted her hair away from her sweaty face, watching her with the most horrified look on her face. It didn’t have to be said that she knew the only reason that she of all people had been bitten was because she’d been acting recklessly in the two days that had passed since finding out her wife had to die.

It wasn’t that she was necessarily trying to off herself before the moment Anastasia would die... but that didn’t mean she was necessarily trying to preserve her life either. She just didn’t know what to do... and she had no idea how one was supposed to process these feelings or prepare themselves for the kind of loss she knew she was staring in the face.

“Can you walk?,” Anastasia whispered.

She simply shook her head and buried her face into her chest, tightening her arms around her like a vice to stop her from moving.

Anastasia sighed softly and cupped the back of her head, pressing her lips to her crown as her shoulders began to shudder.

“I know that this is hurting you... and I’m so sorry that it is. I wish that I— I wish that I knew exactly why this had to happen so that I could explain it to you but it’s one of those things that I just know... but I don’t fully understand all the way through,” Anastasia said, her voice as fragile as broken glass.

She huffed but didn’t lift her eyes, instead only tightening her arms around her.

“I understand it on the surface level. Like the prevention of a new social order that will do nothing but cause a lot of pain for a lot of people.” She paused. “They say that right before you die your whole life flashes before you — a medley of your own personal greatest hits. Well then, I must be about to live, because events that haven’t happened yet are constantly pushing themselves into my head and I can’t... quite put the pieces together to figure out what they all mean. But I can’t help but feel that my death will only pave the way for greater things—“

“There can be no goodness in this world without you in it,” she muttered. “All the beauty of the stars means nothing when life here on earth is so ugly— Everything good in my life is because of you.”

Anastasia gently tilted her face up, forcing her to look her in the eyes. “You are going to be just fine.”

“No—“

“Yes,” the Bloodkeeper interjected, stroking her damp cheek with her thumb. “Sweetheart, the last thing I want is for you to give up on the world again because of me— because of what is in store for me. You can stand on your feet without me — the tide will still go out without my pushing it. The spring will still melt the snow without my warm breath nagging it. You’re a person, all on your own, with hopes and thoughts and dreams completely separate from mine. You don’t need to lean on me to be complete. You are as whole and self-sufficient and tender on your own as you are with me.”

“I’m so scared, Annie,” she whispered. “I am not afraid of death.” She pressed a kiss into her palm, the slow, sensual act weakening her. “I am afraid of losing you.”

“I know.” Anastasia pressed her brow to hers. “But there will be nothing to be afraid of soon. I promise. You’ll heal... I promise you will.”

“And that’s exactly what I’m afraid of. What you think looks like morning will be the beginning of endless night for me.” She sniffed. “Why will you not allow me to stand at your side whilst you do what you have to? I can't bury the woman I love again. Not ever." She pressed her lips to hers. "Please don't make me, Annie.”

“Besides the fact I physically won’t be able to do what I have to if there’s any chance that I’ll hurt you,” Anastasia breathed, “something is telling me that you have to keep living. That there is something extremely important that you still have to do— it’s just not your time.”

She allowed her eyes to drift closed, her head rested on Anastasia’s shoulder. “What future could I possibly have that does not involve you?”

“This isn't television. This isn't a movie,” Anastasia said softly. “Giles and Buffy aren't gonna appear and show us how to deal with our wonderful new problems. Some damn owl isn't gonna come sailing in through the window from Hogwarts. There's no Dumbledore. The Cullens aren't gonna show up and invite us to live with them in Forks. There's nothing. This isn't make believe. This is it. It's me and only me.” She swallowed thickly. “I’m trying the best that I can to make this bearable, Kami, to make it all mean something, and to save the most people I can. I wish it didn’t have to be this way but I— I don’t get a say. If I thought that fighting it would make a difference you know I would already be fighting it tooth and nail... but it won’t change anything. There are two types of visions. Those that will happen no matter what, and those that can be stopped. Now more than ever, I wish I couldn’t tell them apart. It’s already been decided by something much bigger than myself.”

She pulled her onto her lap and they held one another in silence for a long time before Kamilah found the energy to speak. “I know this is hard on you, too, my love. I know. It simply isn’t fair that so much is asked of you.”

“Life isn’t fair,” Anastasia shrugged... and what a revelation that was. “There’s five things we can do to deal with this—“

“Besides slamming a stake into each other’s chest as a massive Fuck You to the universe?,” she muttered.

Anastasia kissed her brow. “First thing, I think, is to realise we can’t blame anybody for this. It’s just life... it’s just what I am. Second, acknowledge that it sucks. It does. Third, it’s a tunnel not a cave. Fourth, it still sucks. Fifth, it’s not as hopeless as it seems. Assign meaning to it. Choose for these horrible things to bring us closer and not farther apart.”

She laughed weakly. “Those inspirational posters you allowed your college age interns to decorate the Raines Corp labs with have been rubbing off on you. It’s a tunnel not a cave—“

“They typed that in Comic Sans onto an Instagram picture they blew up,” Anastasia snorted.

“Heavens, not Comic Sans,” she murmured.

Leaning forward, Anastasia pressed her lips to hers. Her mouth was so still, so warm and perfect. Her closed eyes filled with dampness as she lingered over the sensation of touching her lips with hers.

Their every kiss since finding out what was in store felt like saying goodbye. Filled with the same love and passion that had been there since the beginning, but now tinged with sadness, tainted with fear.

When one faced pain on a daily basis, one either learned to live with it or let it consume them... and this was consuming Kamilah the way no pain ever had before.

“Come on, let’s get you some blood and get you cleaned up,” Anastasia said softly. “Lean on me, I’ll help you stand.”

“As you wish, my love,” she breathed. “The after can you just...”

“Just?” She spoke not in a whisper but on an intimate level, her voice rolling like the caress of dark velvet. “Mm? Tell me what I can do to make this even a little bit better?”

Before her brain could engage, she kissed her and whispered, "You. You're what I want. Will you just... hold me?”

Anastasia nodded and kissed her cheek. “It’s just you and me right now. No one’s going to hurt us... I’ll hold you for as long as you’ll let me.”

~~~~ 1401 - Burghausen Castle, Bavaria ~~~~

“You are all devils!,” the foolish mortal who’d charged into their home with the idiotic delusion that he could singlehandedly slay the entire Order of Avalon.

She scoffed, having discovered that most of the terrors that stalked the night weren’t really terrors at all. They were mostly like regular folks, just trying to live their lives. As long as they were left alone they were perfectly harmless except for the occasional bite on the neck. Mortals were the real terrors, always getting worked up and looking to kill something... that was why they’d felt the need to form The Order in the first place.

“How can a monster tell if he is a monster if he has never known anything else?,” Merlin jeered as he prowled around the terrified looking knight.

“Madness breeds only more madness!,” the boy growled, lunging at the wizard with his sword before tumbling to the floor as he effortlessly side stepped the blow and tripped him.

“Is that so?,” Merlin smirked.

“I fail to understand why he will not just put him out of his misery,” she muttered to Gaius as the two of them watched the commotion from their thrones at the front of the great hall. “A sane individual does not taunt their prey for this long.”

Gaius tutted and reached out to her, and her stomach instantly knotted at the sight of his hand but rather than striking her, he stroked her cheek. “Now, my queen, I happen to believe that nothing is more creative... nor destructive... than a brilliant mind with a purpose. It is entertaining, is it not?”

She said nothing and looked back at the drunken revellers gathered around this barbaric show of strength.

“Even now, you fail to grasp the strength of my conviction.” And with those last words, the foolish mortal boy plunged the three blades he’d brought to end them through his body — one stabbing into his chest, a second ripping apart the poorly made armour surrounding his heart, and a third sliding through the loose metallic links at his neck. Bright fluid like the blood of a star poured from the wounds. He swayed, then toppled face first to crash upon the ground and was still.

“Well, that was unexpected,” Merlin remarked as the great hall erupted into cheers and some low ranking vampires rushed forwards to feed on the corpse.

She scoffed and rolled her eyes. This was the third local mortal in a week who’d arrived at their door with sword in hand. The third local mortal in a week who’d shortened their already pitifully short lifespan by their own lack of intelligence.

“As much as I do so loathe mortals,” Merlin beamed as he waltzed up the steps and threw himself down dramatically on his throne, “I will admit that one had courage. The last one sobbed and begged for forgiveness at my feet.”

Gaius snorted. “They are a disease upon the earth. Hard to believe I ever was one.”

A disease which sustains our lives, you fool, she thought as she watched the bloodthirsty beasts tearing into the body like a pack of wild dogs. There was no sign of their humanity. No sign of any conscience at all.

“That is why we shall rid the earth of them all, brother, save for a select few your people require to live well,” Merlin promised with absolute conviction. “Our men have slaughtered 40,000 across the continent this month alone. We shall take this world as our own— with magic and blood, we shall take it.”

She side-eyed Gaius and Merlin as they grabbed one another’s forearms and smiled wickedly at one another. Brothers. It was laughable that either of them believed that the other wouldn’t turn on them at the first available opportunity, for all either of them really cared for was power.

Did they think anyone would want to live in a world that they ran or set up? It was all very nice for them to say they were anarchists, but they only wanted anarchy for themselves. For the rest of the world, they wanted to make sure they did what they said, think how they thought, and remembered they were the bosses.

There was a time at the beginning of all of this when she might’ve found 40,000 deaths an exciting prospect. When she might’ve seen each one as 40,000 steps closer to freedom— but what freedom could she ever truly obtain?

Not only was the guilt she had no desire to feel drowning her, the fact that she would never truly be free was like a dagger to the heart. She was a prisoner. Her chains may have been a beast’s twisted affections and an unending life she’d neither wanted or consented to... but they were chains all the same. 

Her prison cell may have been a castle... but even a castle could be a prison.

There were times that she convinced herself that she not only liked this man sitting at her side, but loved him too. Times she convinced herself that what she was feeling or experiencing couldn’t possibly be as bad as she thought it was... that she was somehow fooling herself into believing she was being mistreated.

“Kamilah,” Merlin said, drawing her attention. “I intend to go hunting tomorrow evening whilst Gaius oversees the training of our newest troops. Would you like to join me?”

“Mortals or game?,” she mumbled.

He smirked. “Are they not one in the same?”

She swallowed thickly but before she could answer, Gaius rested a hand on her arm and squeezed a little too tightly for it to be comfortable... but she didn’t react. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “She will be occupied,” he said. 

“Will she?,” Merlin asked, raising his brow and his soulless eyes flickering to where his fist was closed around her forearm. Odd man that he was... always seeming to notice when Gaius was being less than pleasant. Her creator had treated women the way he did because that was what he had done for his whole life. No one had ever really tried to change it… or even question it... but the vile wizard did — likely because he was trying to win her affections.

“Indeed,” nodded Gaius. “I will require help overseeing the troops. You will help me, won’t you, my queen?”

“Yes, my king,” she deadpanned, looking him right in the eyes. Perhaps she was being overly sensitive to his actions, after all, he was a man before he was a monster, yet she could not help feeling perturbed by the ivory points of his fangs which were on the verge of peaking past his fleshy lips.

“Come,” Merlin beamed, hauling Gaius to his feet with such force he let go of her arm. “Let us go stir up some trouble in the local village before the sun rises.”

Gaius laughed heartily. “You read my mind.”

Without another word to her they wandered away. But before they disappeared from the great hall, Merlin looked back at her and mouthed, “I’m sorry he hurt you.”

She said nothing in return but the moment they left, she did too, but it was not so much the fresh air that she needed as a few minutes of solitude, a few minutes in which to collect herself. She stood to the side of one open doorway that was hardly ever used, half hidden by the heavy velvet drapery, and felt a raw ache at the back of her throat. She wanted to cry, she realised. For all the great popularity and respect The Order was bringing her she felt a terrible loneliness.

She did not like the terms of her service here— the terms of her life. She did not get any offspring, any beloved, she couldn’t ask something that was not in Gaius’ power and she did not get to have a soul that she could stand to live with inside her head.

The only comfort she had was the strange redheaded figment of her imagination she’d dreamt of for the first time the year before. The woman who existed nowhere but inside her own head, yet felt like the realest thing in her whole life.

Her sweet voice seemed to echo inside her head as she watched life busting around her through the pane of glass she was stood at. “Find me, Kami.”

“But where are you?,” she whispered to herself, resting her flushed face against the foggy glass. “Are you even real?”

She heaved a sigh and inhaled the effluvium of smoke from self-rolled cigarettes and burnt out cigars that only added to the gloomy ambience of the hallway. Perhaps, this dinginess was one of the reasons she frequented this spot as she did, though she doubted it. She was much too sinister for such simple reasoning.

Kami. As odd as the shortened version of her name sounded to her highly particular tastes, it led her to believe she was so desperate for a genuine connection with somebody that she was creating this dream woman inside her head as a way to cope with the loneliness. 

Kami. It spoke of a certain amount of closeness and comfort between two people. Much more genuine that the empty ‘my queen’ drivel. There was nobody alive who’d dare call her something so... bizarrely sweet.

For a reason unbeknownst to her, she could not help coveting those strange hooded eyes of hers — the black of her pupil enveloped by a whirlpool of forget me not blue. If she could catch her gaze once more, even if it was only to discern if she had been as unnerved by her as she had been by her, she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to look away... but she could not summon this woman in her dreams at will. She appeared only when it was fitting for her to do so, apparently.

She had to be real, she thought to herself as she began the walk to her quarters, thoroughly ignoring everybody she passed. Her imagination wasn’t good enough to dream somebody like her up out of nowhere.

Was this woman a sign that she ought to run? She wondered. The woman sounded somewhat Russian or like she was from a country within its vicinity... was that were she should flee to? The East? Should she set out in search of her and simply hope she was actually real?

The idea lasted inside her head for all of ten seconds before dying. There was no place far enough that she could run. 

If a doe fled into the forest as far as her legs would carry her, did not the wolves simply follow?

Why was it that sometimes— all of the time, it was what you could not have that you desired the most?


	7. pains all we know in this war.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; Monster by Annabelle.

~~~~ Brittany, France ~~~~

Stumbling through the dark, Kamilah did what she could to ignore Lily’s never ending stream of sarcastic comments. She’d known her long enough to know that sarcasm was her coping mechanism... but that didn’t make it any less irritating at a time like this.

Heaving a sigh, she shone her flashlight up ahead and all around her. Nothing jumped out of the darkness to give away why she’d been so drawn here... but the air, which one would expect to feel damp and cold, was filled with a humid static energy. It was the remnants of some sort of ancient power that felt eerily similar to Anastasia’s.

Whatever this place was, it was important. There were secrets concealed here... somewhere. She just knew it.

“Do you all feel the energy?,” Adrian whispered.

They all murmured their confirmations as the bright beams of light from their flashlights darted around the pitch-black cavern. Everyone tried their best to smile, but their smiles were lies. Most smiles were these days. They were all dreadfully ill at ease with this place.

“Now, now, you aren't afraid of monsters in the dark, are you?,” she muttered to Serafine as she tripped on a particularly large rock on the ground and stumbled into her.

Her oldest friend panted heavily but settled the moment she caught a flash of her eyes, winking wickedly at her. “No," she said, shivering. “After all, I was one of them... for a long time.”

“Can you pick up anything, you know, psychically?,” Lily prodded. “I may not be a genius or a psychic myself, but even I can tell when shit ain’t right. This place feels... weird.”

“Let me try,” Serafine breathed. “There is certainly something odd lingering in the air— Anastasia and Kano taught me a few new techniques that may come in handy...”

“Weird is putting it mildly,” Adrian murmured from where he was crouched down a few feet away inspecting the floor of the cave. “There are old footprints here and lots of them— and since this place doesn’t appear on the maps I highly doubt they’re from mortal hikers.”

“How old do you reckon they are?,” she prodded.

“Decades at least,” he said. “Possibly centuries. They’ve certainly been here and undisturbed for a long time.”

She breathed deeply, her eyes focused upon the roof of the cave. For some odd reason the rocks seemed to be sparkling when the beams of light hit them, almost like they had been coated in glitter or some sort of naturally occurring bioluminescent material.

“And this?,” she asked him, nodding upwards.

“It could be a number of things,” he said. “Without a lab and carefully cultivated samples, it’s quite impossible to say for certain.”

She walked a few feet ahead of the others, keeping a hand trailing lightly along the left wall to cling to any sort of bearings that she could. Despite the twinkling roof, enhanced eyesight, and the top of the market flashlights, the cave was still very dark. Dark enough that even she struggled to see more than a few feet in front of her face.

Everyone had that inner fear of a darkness like this one, no matter how old they got. It was an ingrained instinct to fear the velvety blackness of the night, of things you could not quite see, but knew deep down in your bones were there, waiting, watching. But despite how frightened she was, her spine was steel. Her heart was armour. Her eyes were fire. And her determination pushed her onwards even when every ounce of common sense she had in her was screaming that they ought to turn back.

‘The world destroyed her in the end. Too many sparks led to explosions,’ the horrifying voices whispered in her head, ‘she went down in flames and blood...’

She turned back to the others and shone her flashlight over them, and they quite clearly hadn’t heard anything. Even in the vampire world, suddenly hearing voices wasn’t considered to be a good thing— it was almost always the first sign of one descending into madness... and given all she’d endured recently, a descent into madness would hardly be unheard of. Was she truly going mad? She wondered. Or were these voices leading her to whatever it was Anastasia had felt she had to survive for?

“The static we’re feeling is definitely the remnants of some sort of dark magic,” Serafine said as they walked. “Merlin’s magic.”

“How can you tell?,” Adrian asked.

“I knew the man for centuries,” she breathed, “I’d know his magic anywhere— he spent a long time here. The type of magic he used leaves behind a scar that one who is susceptible to picking up subtle changes in the energy of a place can pick up on. It feels like... almost like he was bound here by something bigger than himself. Like he spent a long time trying to break free...”

“That may explain why we were free of him for centuries,” she said quietly. “If he was here then—“

“We’re not gonna be trapped here, are we?,” yelped Lily.

“No,” Serafine said. “Whatever it was that imprisoned Merlin was bound to his blood, I can sense that much with so much clarity it’s almost frightening— I wish I could say more but Anastasia had just begun teaching Kano and I the method she’d developed for analysing the energy of a place.” She sighed. “Within seconds she could make the history of a place come alive inside her mind, it was a fascinating thing to witness. I’m nowhere nearly as skilled as she was—“

“You’ve done marvellously,” she interjected. “And were Annie here, she’d tell you the exact same thing.”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Adrian said from up ahead of them, “but the cave splits into two separate paths. Which way should we—“

“Right.” She spoke so quickly and with so much assurance that she startled herself. How she knew the answer... she couldn’t say with any certainty at all... but she knew it nonetheless. “We go right.”

“How do you know?,” Serafine asked.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “The same way I knew we had to divert from our planned path, I suppose.”

“Kami,” a whisper carried down the right tunnel murmured. 

She froze and her eyes widened. That voice was like a punch to the gut and everything she’d ever wanted all at once. It was heaven. It was hell— and the others and quite clearly heard it as well.

It was real.

It was her.

“Annie!,” she screamed as she took off sprinting, ignoring the others as they called out to her and tried to catch her. “I’m coming, Annie!” Tears spilled down both of her cheeks as she picked up the pace until she was sprinting as fast as her legs could carry her.

“Find me, Kami,” Anastasia’s voice called from somewhere in the darkness.

“I will, baby!,” she cried. “I’m coming— I promise, I’m coming! Where are you?! Annie?!”

“Kamilah, it’s not really her!,” Serafine yelled after her. “You know Merlin used to lure his victims into his traps with spells like this—“

“It has to be her!,” she snapped defiantly as she kept on running.

“Kami,” Anastasia’s voice said in the quietest of whispers. “It’s dark and it’s cold— Where are you? Why did you let me die? You should’ve stopped me...”

“Annie— I—“ A loud sob escaped her throat and echoed throughout the cave as she ran. “Baby, I’m so sorry— I’m coming now, I promise I’ll find you, just tell me where you are and—“

“It’s not her, Kamilah!,” Serafine screamed. “You know it isn’t her!”

Her wild race caused the dried-up ferns, thorny plants, and low-hung stalagmite to grab at her clothing in the mad dash over the narrow packed dirt through the maze of boulders and different systems of tunnels. Deep down she knew the chances of finding Anastasia in here were slim to none but she couldn’t bring herself to stop running towards the source of her voice. 

She hoped with everything she had in her that Merlin had cast a spell and somehow sent her here instead of killing her. That the ash in the urn wasn’t her at all. That in a matter of moments her angel would be back in her arms and all would be well once again— but deep down she knew it wasn’t so. Deep down she knew Merlin cast these sick spells to lure the grieving into his clutches like moths to a flame in their moments of weakness.

“It hurt, Kami,” Anastasia’s voice now sobbed with so much anguish that it stopped her in her tracks. “It still hurts...”

“Stop!,” she screamed, covering her ears as the imitation of her voice began to cry. “Stop it! Stop!”

Serafine practically knocked her over as she barrelled into her, grabbing her by the waist. “It’s not her,” she repeated. “It’s his the remnants of one of his spells— You know his magic fed on pain. Your pain is so profound that whatever magic remains in this place is twisting your grief into a weapon to stop you discovering whatever he has hidden here.”

“Make it stop!,” she wailed, sinking down the wall as Anastasia’s tortured screams ricocheted off the walls and rang in her ears. Both she and the magical imitation of her wife sounded more like dying beasts than women as their agonised cries muddled together and carried through the cave. “Please make it stop!”

“I would if I could but I don’t have that power, mon amie,” Serafine said, keeling beside her and drawing her into her arms. “All spells eventually run their course— I don’t know when it’ll burn itself out but it will. I promise it will.”

“What the fuck is happening?!,” Lily sobbed as she punched the wall. “How did he know what she sounded like when she was crying like that? None of us ever heard her crying like that!”

“His magic was an awful thing,” Serafine whispered. “Wicked to its core.”

“It’s not her,” Adrian said gently as he knelt on the other side of her. “She’s not really hurting and she doesn’t blame you for anything. You didn’t let her die, alright?”

“I did,” she sobbed. “I did. I should’ve stopped her— I should’ve—“

“There’s no pain where she is,” he soothed, stroking her hair. “There is only peace. Anastasia did what she had to do for us and once again proved herself the sort of leader the community has always needed. Leadership is not just about giving orders. It’s about being prepared to put your body and soul on the line to protect those who look to you for command. Any leader who won’t isn’t worth the name— and she did it time and again. She died a hero, she never was and will never be what this spell is trying to convince you that she is: she does not blame you.”

She couldn’t bring herself to do much more than clamp her hands even tighter over her ears as Anastasia’s voice continued screaming, as the spell concocted words that would never leave the real Anastasia’s lips and assaulted her with them. Every one of her deepest fears were laid bare for everyone to see as the version of her wife formed of Merlin’s magic screamed. And screamed. And screamed.

None of them even had time to throw themselves out of the way as bright green sparks of dying magic flickered from the walls and struck into her skin. It happened as it always had when Merlin had been alive and using his magic on a person, swallowing her swiftly and completely. Intense. Painful. Quick, vivid colours spun beneath her eyelids. Sounds were sharp inside her skull. Fire shot up through her bones. She may have been screaming and she wouldn’t have known, she couldn’t even make out what the others were saying as they panicked around her.

It felt like there was smoke in her nose, thick and black, and like she couldn’t breathe. It stung her eyes and licked at her skin. The sound of wood and metal crashed down as she felt her skin blister and pop and she knew immediately this wasn’t her, knew that this wasn’t actually happening here in this cave, knew it was someone else’s pain she was feeling— knew that it was Anastasia’s dying moments she was experiencing as her own screams and visions of Mydiea assaulted her mind.

This was what being burnt alive felt like, she realised, as agonising pain tore through her limbs. She felt like she was on fire, being scorched from the inside out as she’d expected. Everything burned and curled and ignited, the world around her pockmarked by flash fires as she saw the temple. Saw herself and their family watching on helplessly. Something withered in her nose and she realised it was her. Anastasia had been aware of herself dying. It had not been quick. It had not been painless. She’d been aware of the dancing embers blackening as she crumbled to ash and of her burnt bones shattering. 

Adrian and Serafine tried to shake her out of this trance. They tried to pin her down and hold her to offer any comfort that they could, but nothing worked. 

She felt herself scream and she hoped she was not. She writhed in their arms and she really hoped she was not. 

But the magic didn’t wear off until the moment Anastasia’s life ended and the vision cut out. Until the moment she was dead. Gone. Her agony drawn to a bitter conclusion— but rather than snapping back to the present moment she simply stayed there in the dark.

She was crying. Oh heaven and hell, she thought, stop with the tears. Given the night she was having, the tears were logical. But feeling her own face crumple, hearing the gut-deep harsh sobs, filled her with an irrational need to gag herself with the first object she could get her hands on.

As soon as the urge had gelled into conscious thought, she heard Anastasia’s voice again from somewhere in the blackness that dulled her senses. She said her name. Just her name. And though she couldn’t see her, the blackness behind her eyes turned a familiar shade of crimson, her essence hardening into something tangible and she swore she felt her wife’s arms sliding up around her shivering, aching body.

“Annie?,” she panted.

Behind her, the arms tightened around her, steadying her, keeping her close. 

“It’s okay, love,” she heard her wife’s voice whispering. “You’re safe.”

“Am I hallucinating?” Her question came out as a croak... this felt different to when she’d heard her voice before. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly why... but it did.

“Yes, yes you are.” 

“You’re just a figment of my imagination. A fantasy?”

“Yes,” Anastasia whispered. 

“You’re still a terrible liar.”

She felt lips on the nape of her neck. “I love you all the same.”

Before she could open her mouth to say anything, she snapped back to reality. To her family panicking and yelling her name. They were all looking down over her and she was laying on the floor, staring up at them with no logical explanations as to what had just happened.

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed by the time the pain stopped and the amount of static in the air finally dipped, but despite the fact it probably hadn’t been more than an hour, it felt like it’d been a thousand years. Longer, even. And it was then she realised that some victories were merely defeat wearing the wrong clothing.

“You’re alright,” Serafine soothed as she smoothed her hair away from her sweaty brow. “You’re safe. Everything is alright—“

“Don’t say that,” she croaked. “It was her memory...”

“What do you mean?,” Adrian asked with tears in his eyes. “What just happened?”

“I saw her death but from her perspective and then I felt her with me.” She wiped roughly at her eyes with a trembling hand as she sat up with Serafine’s help. “I felt it— when I said she forced herself not to scream, I was right. Her abilities burnt her alive from the inside out. I’ve never felt pain like that—“

“Shhhh,” Serafine cooed. “It’s over now. You’re safe.”

She nodded and accepted Lily’s purple Hydro Flask water bottle, taking a long sip out of the contents. “This— this is whiskey.”

“I thought you needed it more than water,” Lily sniffled, resting an affectionate hand on her knee. “Now does anyone wanna tell me what the fuck just happened?”

She smiled as gratefully as she could and began chugging. She kept going until she was breathless and had drained the entire bottle of its contents.

“Another one of Merlin’s tricks,” Serafine explained. “Whenever he was hunting or guarding something important he would use his magic to torture his prey. He’d conjure the most painful things a person could endure— and for Kamilah that is anything to do with Anastasia’s death.” 

“Which means that he has indeed hidden something of great importance somewhere in this cave,” she said. “Something that is important enough for him to have cast an enchantment that would outlive him— the goal was undoubtedly to have us turn back after enduring it and a less determined person certainly would.”

“You mean to say we’re just gonna go on our merry way like none of that shit ever happened?,” Lily huffed. “You were literally just screaming and rolling around on the ground in pain— We’ve heard Anastasia screaming like she was being tortured— What could possibly be worth enduring that for?”

“I—,” she cut off as she noticed a red orb of light hovering behind Adrian, Serafine, and Lily. Her sudden silence and fixed gaze caused everyone to turn to face the light.

“Hell nah,” Lily groaned. “What in the everloving fuck...”

Green sparks of magic flickered off of the walls and ricocheted off of the red orb, and rather than hitting them they simply fell around them. 

“It’s her,” Kamilah whispered. “It’s shielding us. That’s— That’s the colour of her abilities, the colour her eyes would go when she was harnessing a lot of her power—“

“Kamilah,” Adrian said as she struggled to her feet. “You mustn’t touch it— Whatever it is, it’s probably just another one of Merlin’s traps—“

“His magic was green,” she interjected. “Red was Annie’s colour. The first colour of Spring and last of Summer. The colour of rebirth. Of blood. Of life. Of beginning.”

She took a small step forwards and regarded the strange orb through swollen eyes. The light glowed around her so brightly she looked like she was floating. 

“This is impossible,” Serafine muttered as she appeared at her side. “This should be impossible...”

“What is it?,” Lily prodded.

“This is composed of Anastasia’s energy— are you wearing her wedding rings, by any chance?,” prodded Serafine.

“Around my neck. I have my life’s blessing, too.”

“Sometimes some of a person’s energy can linger in sentimental objects. Sometimes part of people’s spirit can hold onto emotions for people and things. It’s one way they bind themselves to this world,” she explained. 

“Please don’t tell me this bitch made her rings into goddamn Horcruxes,” snorted Lily.

“No, Lily, this is real life... not Harry Potter,” Serafine breathed. “This... feels different to what one would normally feel. It feels more than what one would expect—“

“Meaning what?,” asked Adrian.

“Anastasia was an incredibly powerful woman, as we know. She was capable of things the rest of us can scarcely even begin to imagine. If she’d found a way to transfer some of her power into the rings like... tokens of her protection... it would explain why Merlin’s magic is now unable to touch us.” Her brow furrowed. “Kano gave her many lessons on ancient psychic objects that we could use to amplify our abilities— in antiquity the objects were often activated through a certain amount of physical suffering that disrupted a person’s psychic balance... which would explain why this only appeared after what happened to you, Kamilah.”

“You’re saying that she’s somehow turned her rings into psychic tools?,” she murmured as she pulled the chain around her neck out of her top. Her rings and the life’s blessing being revealed only seemed to make the crimson light glow brighter. “For what purpose would—“

“She knew you’d stop at nothing to bring her back,” Lily said quietly. “Maybe she’s left us some of her power to help with the ritual because — and I’m just saying what we’re all thinking — let’s be real, there’s nobody else who’s even remotely powerful enough to raise someone from the dead. I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew we’d need her.”

“It would be just like her to plan for all of this,” she said before letting out a watery laugh, clutching at her necklace as her eyes drifted closed and she soaked in the familiar feel of Anastasia’s energy as it enveloped her. “Protecting me, even now... I don’t even know why I’m surprised.”

She pictured her arms around her. Imagined her smiling and kissing her brow, the way she always did when she needed comfort. In her mind she was a glowing creature from another world, opening her arms and beckoning her. She wanted to tumble into her embrace. 

She wouldn't mind the sunshine or anything that could ever possibly happen if she could just hold her forever.

~~~~ Nine Weeks Earlier - New York, NY ~~~~

“You did well,” Anastasia soothed as she handed Nikhil a bag of blood and surveyed the carnage that had unfolded in City Hall after an Order attack had been intercepted by Adrian, Nikhil, and numerous members of Clan Raines. There were countless injured and many good vampires had lost their lives as they’d torn out the hearts of Order soldiers and defended the mortal workers in the building so well that only three mortal lives had been lost.

“I tried to save her, Ms. Anastasia,” Nikhil winced as he clutched at his shattered leg and glanced towards the ice cold corpse of a young mortal woman as Arnold Northmun covered her with a blanket... she was young enough that she’d been only an intern by the looks of it. “I’m not much of a fighter but I tried—“

“Shhh. It’s alright. Everything is going to be alright.” Anastasia knelt at his side and caressed his tear soaked cheek that was so bloodless it actually looked grey. “I know you did your best and she knows it too. You’ve done us all proud, Nikhil.”

He sucked in a deep breath and nodded tightly. “Thank you. It means a great deal to hear that from you.”

Anastasia nodded and let out a soft sigh. “Make sure you drink all of your blood, your leg is broken pretty badly— this pint will heal you enough to walk over to the cafeteria where some of the mortal workers you protected are insisting on being donors to heal our people. You need to feed well.”

“I will,” he said, trying to smile. “Don’t worry about me— our people need you. Go do what you do best.”

Anastasia smiled and patted his shoulder before standing and taking her outstretched hand. 

“He seems to be attacking places he knows you aren’t present at,” she whispered. “Each one of his attacks have been at the opposite end of the city from your location at the very least.”

“We know he fears me for some reason,” Anastasia nodded.

“I think the reason is rather obvious.”

The Bloodkeeper sighed. “Tell me what I should do— everybody is looking to me for answers that even I don’t have. I know how this has to end but I can’t clearly see the moves we will make in order to get there.”

“I am not very fond of the human race. However, we will not let them die by the hands of our species nor any other. For thousands of years, we've walked this earth with them, and a war is not in the best interest of either party. It'll only create suffering and tragedy on both sides. We can't allow this to happen. No more waiting for him to reveal himself. Our only option is to find him and kill him— then maybe if we take him by surprise you will not have to die.”

Anastasia smiled sadly and caressed her cheek, but she didn’t contradict her despite the way her eyes told her that no matter what happened she simply wouldn’t survive it. “Then thats what we’ll do—“

She was cut off by a high-pitched screeching sound followed by Merlin’s gravelly voice calling out to her. “Bloodkeeper,” he crooned as an apparition of him appeared a few feet in front of them, startling many injured people so much that they actually screamed. “We meet at last.”

“Yet you’re too cowardly to face me in person,” Anastasia shot back, stepping protectively in front of her. “I must say, I expected more from you. Even Rheya Apostolous and Gaius Augustine had the balls to show up to fight me in person... yet here you are with this pitiful illusion.”

Multiple screams and whimpers continued to echo throughout the lobby, with even the mortal paramedics and police officers cowering behind Anastasia. Even though few of these people had actually witnessed her in action, they knew she was about the only one capable of keeping them safe. She was the first leader Kamilah had ever known to be truly worthy of people’s faith in her, as most of the time people vastly overestimated the courage of those in power. They were often more interested in holding on to their power than in doing anything worthwhile with it— but not her wife.

He laughed humourlessly as he paced backwards and forwards the way he’d always done. His arms behind his poker straight back. His soulless eyes boring into Anastasia the way they’d once bore into her. “You are a feisty one, aren’t you?” He shook his head in bemusement. “Kamilah, my old friend, you’ve certainly got your work cut out for you—“

“You don’t talk to her,” Anastasia growled, her eyes glowing red. “You talk to me.”

The shimmering apparition of Merlin stopped in its tracks and actually seemed to pale at the sight of Anastasia’s eyes. Kamilah expected him to talk to her once again, if only to goad Anastasia into a reaction... but he didn’t. He actually averted his eyes from her altogether, his jaw clenching tight as he stared at Anastasia.

“You don’t even know what you are,” he breathed. “Extraordinary.”

“I know exactly what I am,” Anastasia replied evenly.

“Do you?,” he smirked. “You and I are much more alike than you think— we’re bound at the soul, Anastasia.”

“Stealing Rheya’s lines now, are we?,” Anastasia laughed. “If you’re going to waste my time at least try to be original.”

“We could be great together, you know.” His eyes began to glow green, mirroring Anastasia’s power. “With you at my side we could rule this world for megaannums.”

Anastasia laughed humourlessly and took a step towards the illusion as she spat, “Go to hell.”

“You know how this will end,” he growled. “If you do not join me, you know damn well there is only one way this is fated to end for you. You’ll be cursing Kamilah to an unending life without you—“

“Don’t even say her name,” Anastasia snapped, her anger shaking the earth. Wherever Merlin was hiding out he seemed to feel it, as he stumbled sideways and reached out to steady himself on something that they couldn’t see. “You so much as think about her and I will make you scream until the moment I kill you— because I will never do what you do. I will never use my power to kill innocents the way The Order does.”

“Innocents?!,” Merlin growled. “You think the mortals are innocent? They’re nothing more than savage beasts who deserve everything we dish out— Kamilah once shared my beliefs—“ He himself cut off with a loud scream as the earth began to shake again and fell to his knees clutching his head. 

“Did I not warn you?,” Anastasia sighed.

“How are you— This is impossible!” He winced as he looked up at her through his agony as blood began pouring from his nose. “Get out of my head,” he snarled through gritted teeth before starting to scream again as Anastasia wandered a leisurely circle around the shimmering apparition, all the lights in the building flickering wildly. “Get out!”

“This is interesting.” The Bloodkeeper raised a brow and Merlin started to swear as he doubled over, touching his forehead to the ground with his hands tangled up in his hair. “Your mind is a cathedral— so much to see. You have strong connections to France. Oh, and there are hundreds of Order soldiers hiding out in an abandoned warehouse in Flatbush. More in an apartment in Hoboken— but where are you? Hmmm... let me see, let me see...”

“What is this?,” he rasped, blood now pouring from his nose like water from a tap. “This shouldn’t be possible— I’m not really in the room with you, you shouldn’t be able to—“ He cut himself off with another scream. 

“I thought I’d made it quite clear that people only know what I want them to know about my abilities,” Anastasia said, feigning exasperation as she rifled through his mind. “If I ever appeared weak to you, it is only because I wanted to— and you’re planning an attack in Radio City Music Hall tomorrow night... how creative... stealing ideas from Rheya again...”

He growled, trying and failing to stand. “You. Will. Pay. For. This.”

Anastasia snorted. “Okay— and who is Morgan le Fay?”

“Stop!,” screamed Merlin. 

“This is some seriously fucked up shit,” Lily whispered as she appeared at her side with Adrian and Serafine. “What the fuck is she doing? It never usually causes pain when she’s reading people’s minds...”

“She’s making him pay for what he did to me,” she whispered with a smile on her face and tears of gratitude glistening in her eyes. The sight of her woman, as small as she was, standing valiantly in the face of the threat the this man presented, sent heat rushing through her veins.

Serafine gave her shoulder a squeeze and murmured, “and it’s better than I ever could’ve imagined— pity she didn’t know she could do this when Gaius was around to make our lives a misery.”

At that she snorted and patted her hand affectionately. “Indeed it is... but beheading him was more than satisfying enough.”

“Anastasia, your soul is confused!,” Merlin wheezed. “Can’t you see it? Cant you feel it?”

Anastasia hummed, swaying on her feet slightly as her energy began to waver. “Between?”

“Being a human and being a God!,” he snarled. 

Anastasia paused and murmured, “What?”

“You resist it and you bury it but deep down you know— ah— you know that even when you embodied a mortal form you were never completely human.” He grinned maliciously at her, the blood from his nose staining his teeth red. “Always something more. Always on the outside— Just like me.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

“You don’t fool me, Bloodkeeper—“ And at that, he seemed to lose consciousness, his illusion fading away as Anastasia hit the ground like a stone.

“Annie!,” she shrieked, surging forwards with so much speed that she was at her side in less than a second, hauling her trembling body into her arms. “My love—“

“He’s somewhere on Long Island,” Anastasia panted as she peppered kisses over her brow. “I couldn’t get an exact location but I think it might be somewhere near Montauk— did you hear everything I found out?”

“Members of Clan Raines and Clan Sayeed are already heading to Flatbush and Hoboken,” Adrian assured her. “They’ll scout the areas and have them smoked out by dawn. We have eyes everywhere.”

“What did you just do?,” Serafine asked, sinking to her knees beside them with a pinched brow. “You just invaded his mind and tortured him by looking at a projection of his image— he was right when he said that shouldn’t be possible.”

“We are connected in some way I don’t understand yet,” Anastasia whispered. “It doesn’t feel as dramatic as it was with Rheya and she was literally bound to my soul but it— his mind and my mind... they feel like mirrors of each other, somehow. I don’t know how to explain it exactly...”

She trailed off as Kano began walking towards them sedately, slowly clapping his tiny hands as a proud smile spread across his face. “And that, my dear Bloodkeeper, is what it looks like when you stop doubting yourself and have given your all.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Anastasia laughed weakly, regarding her teacher with a curious look. “Do you have any idea what he meant when he said I’ve never been completely human?”

“You’re asking the wrong question,” he said, giving her a look that she couldn’t even begin to decode.

Anastasia’s brow furrowed and she remained silent for a moment. “The connection between us... it’s more than just the fact I’m the only one powerful enough to kill him— that I’m fated to die in this fight. Isn’t it?”

Kano’s expression darkened and he nodded only once. “Yes.”

“We’re the same or similar... somehow... aren’t we?”

“You are the only one who truly knows the answer to that question,” he said quietly. “The rest of us can speculate all we wish but the path to the answers that you seek is one that you must walk alone... as those left behind walk a parallel road to enlightenment. Only when you are ready will the answers reveal themselves to the rest of us.”

Anastasia’s brows shot up, seemingly reading between the lines and understanding everything that Kano hadn’t said as the rest of them stared blankly between them.

“Excuse me, but what the fuck?,” Lily interjected.

Kano merely smiled at Anastasia as she gaped at him. “Do you understand what you must do?”

Anastasia nodded. “I... yes. I think so.”

“Then my work here is done.” He pressed a kiss to Anastasia’s knuckles before beginning to walk away. “I will be seeing you soon— perhaps we’ll indulge in tea rather than meeting in such fraught circumstances.”

“Kano,” The Bloodkeeper called after him. “Thank you... for everything.”

The child vampire bowed deeply at the waist. “Remember nothing truly dies, Anastasia. Death never plays by the rules. And I think that's why we, as flesh and blood beings, fear it so much. Not because it's an inevitability for each of us, but because it's so unpredictable. We all know it's coming for us. Most of us can just never be sure exactly when or what will come of it.” He paused and gave her a secret smile. “Do not fear and do not falter. The grand plan shall reveal itself in time. Trust in it... and give your all even when it seems that you have nothing left to give.”

“I will,” Anastasia nodded, laughing a little. “I won’t let you down.”

“What was all that about?,” she asked the moment Kano was out of earshot.

Anastasia swallowed thickly and suddenly looked like a deer in headlights as she nervously stroked at the wedding set glistening on her finger. “Just... psychic stuff. Loose ends I have to tie up before I face Merlin— it’s nothing we have to worry about.”

“You don’t sound certain about that at all.” She ran a hand through the length of her hair and stroked her cheek with the other. 

Anastasia reached up and framed her face with her hands, and then drew her down so that their brows were pressed together. “It’s just.... certain techniques I’ve read about and never actually gotten around to mastering— Anyway, moving on,” she cleared her throat, “He was thinking a lot about someone called Morgan le Fay. Lily?”

Lily snorted. “Just cause I’m the resident geek of the group you expect me to know who Morgan le Fay is?”

“Do you or don’t you?,” sighed Kamilah.

“Hell yeah I do,” Lily smiled proudly. “But it’s a kinda long winded legend that has been rewritten literally hundreds of times— I think we’d be better discussing this back at The Shadow Den once we finish cleaning up here.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” nodded Anastasia, “but before I do anything else, I need to feed. That was more difficult than it looked.”

“It looked pretty damn difficult,” Serafine chuckled.

“Exactly,” sighed Anastasia. 

~~~~ 1549 - Castillo de la Atalaya, Spain ~~~~

“What on Earth are you doing in here, you old fool?,” Kamilah hissed from the doorway of Merlin’s study, startling Serafine so much that she jumped. “He and Gaius have gone hunting and will be on their way home by now, if he finds out you were in here—“

“Look at this strange book,” Serafine mumbled. “It’s written latin mostly but there are also long passages in a language I cannot decipher— and there was a note stuck to the cover naming it: Bloodbound, Destruction of the Protector.”

“Put it back where you found it,” she growled, wandering into the room and grabbing her friend’s arm. “You know Merlin is highly territorial and possessive regarding his personal belongings—“

“Do you have any idea what language this is?,” Serafine pleaded.

She glanced down at the massive open book rested on the desk and shook her head. “I do not know— now come—“

“Alright, alright,” huffed Serafine. “Just look at the strange drawings first.”

She heaved a sigh as Serafine flipped a few of the pages. Demonic looking creatures were printed on a few of the pages and she rolled her eyes at them— as someone who appreciated fine art, she was far from impressed by the childish sketches. She’d read many books in her life and by the looks of it this one seemed to be either some sort of spell book or version of history that the mortal world would never acknowledge as fact. Their history would never be all fact — it was nothing more than the story the victors of each battle told to keep themselves in power. And it was a slow revision with each and every tale. The more time passed, the easier it became to reinvent the past.

Perhaps this book contained the secret history it benefitted the powers that be to keep hidden, she rationalised. The truth. Why else would someone go to the trouble of inventing an entire language, if not to ensure their secrets remained secret?

However the moment the page turned to one Merlin had marked with a scrap of paper to reveal an image of a red headed woman, she almost choked. Fear wasn't the problem when she looked at this image, she could deal with nerves, it was the excitement she could not explain welling up in her that frightened her most. The unfamiliar emotion was too strong. Too needy. Too everything she was unprepared to deal with.

“Kamilah?”

“It’s her...”

“Who?,” Serafine prodded. “There is nothing on this page.”

She blinked. “What on earth do you mean? There is a drawing of a woman that takes up the entire page.”

“Have you been drinking?”

She simply scoffed in response and trailed her fingertips down the page, right over the top of the woman that Serafine apparently couldn’t see. She was wearing a dark cloak that hid most of her face, save for her lips and her chin. Her flame red locks pouring out of either side of her hood, spilling over her chest and down to her hips like blood.

“You cannot honestly expect me to believe you somehow see nothing on this page,” she snapped. “She is right there.”

“It is but a blank page, Kamilah,” Serafine said calmly.

She said nothing as she traced her outline, committing her form to memory. The soft lips wind-brightened, and the hem of her gown and cloak littered with bits of leaves and grass. She looked like a dark angel, with her lovely calm smile and that rippling ginger hair, and the playful spray of light crimson sparks surrounding her like a halo.

“Run.” The woman on the page seemed to say, the beautiful voice that she’d heard in her dreams was quiet as it rang out inside her head, but the words were a harsh plea. “Please, Kami… Run.”

“Who are you?,” she murmured as she studied the page next to the portrait, the strange language still completely indecipherable. “Why do you haunt me so?”

“What are you two doing in here?,” Merlin’s voice boomed from behind them.

“I apologise. I was simply looking for new reading material,” Serafine said quickly as they turned around. “Kamilah came to fetch me for tea when I was late.”

His enraged expression softened considerably as he regarded her and then spotted the open book behind them. “This page has stumped me for quite some time,” he said, walking towards them with his hands folded behind his back. “Tell me, what do you see when you look at these pages?”

“Nothing,” she said before Serafine could speak. If spoken sincerely enough, and she now spoke most sincerely, lies became truths to the people hungry to hear them. “We see nothing.”

He sighed, coming to a stop at the other side of the table. “As do I... it’s had me stuck for centuries.” For some odd reason she felt physically nauseous as he ran his fingers over the top of the portrait of the woman, seemingly as oblivious as Serafine to what was quite clearly right in front of their faces. “Legend says there is a secret contained here on this very page.”

“What sort of secret?,” asked Serafine.

“The kind that could change everything once uncovered,” he mumbled, staring at her. “One that can only be uncovered by the one bound to it by fate— no amount of spell casting will trick the book into revealing itself. It is ancient magic protecting it... much more powerful than mine.”

Serafine dug her nails into her hand and she cleared her throat awkwardly as she began dragging her towards the door. “Well, that is fascinating to know, Merlin, but if you’ll excuse us—“

“Are you quite certain you see nothing on this page, Kamilah?,” he interjected.

“Are you accusing me of lying?” She raised a brow as her dark eyes bled into an angry shade crimson. 

“No,” he said quickly. “I would not dream of insulting the vampire queen in such a way— you simply seemed rather intrigued by it.”

“The last time I checked, taking an interest in a book was not a crime,” she fired back as she tugged Serafine a little closer to the door. “Goodnight, Merlin.”

She kept a tight hold on Serafine’s arm as she dragged her from the small room and through the winding corridors of the Castillo de la Atalaya, dodging members of The Order as they went about their business. The finery they traveled with that filled every room, much like herself, seemed covered in a layer of grime that succeeded in filling the already dreary building with a miserable kind of murkiness, much like the soot that seemed to swath over the city they were now calling home.

How she loathed this place.

“You mustn’t ever take it upon yourself to invade his study like that again!,” she growled the moment they arrived at Serafine’s room. She slammed the door behind her and glared at the younger woman with red eyes. “He has tortured people into madness for less! What were you thinking?!”

“I had an odd dream about that book,” Serafine said as she sat herself down on the end of her bed. “I had never seen it before in my life but I— the dream I had a few hours ago startled me so much that I had to see if it was real.”

“A prophetic dream?”

“Yes. I think so.” She patted the spot beside her on the bed and she sat down, resting her hands on her skirts. “It was of us and two strangers we have yet to meet, a man and a woman. We all wore odd clothes— you and I wore trousers, if you can believe it.”

She scoffed and tugged at the ridiculous thick black fabric of her dress. “Trousers? You must have scried centuries into the future if we were wearing trousers without being accused of heresy.”

“Indeed,” Serafine nodded as she studied her with a furrowed brow. “In the dream you seemed... distressed. About what, I cannot say with any certainty. But as you were examining the book you— well, to say you were merely sobbing would be to minimise the pain you were quite clearly suffering.”

“I do not sob, and if I did, I certainly would not be sobbing where people could witness it,” she huffed. Tears never were worth the effort of crying them. “It is highly undignified behaviour.”

“Well you were,” Serafine shrugged. “This woman that you think you saw in the book, Kamilah, who is she?”

“A figment of my imagination, I suppose,” she sighed. “It is unimportant— she is not real. I suspect the book merely shows its readers the object of their desires to lure them into it... thankfully I am smart enough to know that wishes are only granted in fairy tales. It was clearly enchanted by some sort of dark magic.”

“Yes,” nodded Serafine. “It was— but whatever was written inside, I have a feeling that we will not understand it for quite some time.”


	8. and i know it's true, that visions are seldom what they seem.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; Once Upon A Dream by Lana Del Rey.

~~~~ Brittany, France ~~~~

“So when you say you felt her with you,” Serafine said as they wandered arm-in-arm through the cave, “what exactly do you mean by that?”

She sighed and kept her eyes focused on the floating red orb now lighting their way and protecting them from the nefarious green embers of magic that were sparking like bolts of lightning along the rock surface all around them. How was she supposed to explain what she’d felt when she didn’t even understand it herself?

“Exactly that,” she replied. “Once the vision of her death had drawn to a close I felt her holding me. I heard her voice and felt her kiss my neck as surely as if she’d been standing right behind me.”

“Did you see her?”

She shook her head. “No... but I’d know the feel of her embrace anywhere— I may have been hallucinating but it felt so real. As real as those odd dreams I had of her long before she’d even been born—“

“Guys,” Lily called from up ahead. “I’ve found something.”

At that, they all picked up the pace and made it to where Lily was standing at the mouth of a darkened alcove in a matter of seconds. The red light illuminated the cavernous space to reveal a room lined with cluttered shelves filled with ancient scrolls and heavy leather bound books. There was a small unmade camp bed covered in a white sheet against the far wall beneath an old Persian rug hung on the damp stone wall that she vaguely recognised, a desk piled high with papers and magical artefacts in the middle of the room, and a long wooden table along the left hand side of the space that reminded her of Anastasia’s Raines Corp laboratories; odd scientific-looking equipment lined the surface, vials of potions and herbs that hadn’t been touched in quite some time laying exactly where Merlin had left them. And from the ceiling hung one rusted old lantern with grimy looking panels of glass on each side to compensate for the lack of natural light.

“Well done, Lily,” Adrian beamed, clapping her affectionately on the shoulder before wandering inside.

“Where do we even start?,” Serafine asked.

“You don’t think— do you recall the night we found that old book in his study?” She drifted towards one of the poorly constructed shelves, peering intently at all the books stacked haphazardly on top of one another. “I'll have to admit that he was a very competent scholar but he apparently could not decipher the one page in the book that revealed itself to me the moment I saw it. I’m not sure I remember the name—“

She cut off immediately as Serafine’s hand clamped around her arm. “My dream— this was it! We were in this very room, in these very clothes!” She tugged at both of their pants and started to laugh. “Trousers, Kamilah! Trousers!”

She snorted and raised both hands in surrender. “You told me so.”

“Do you have any idea what they’re talking about or am I the only one who’s fucking clueless right now?,” Lily whispered to Adrian.

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

Lily responded by giving him a high five for his answer.

“Neither of you were born yet— Kamilah and I found a book in Merlin’s study that he was having trouble reading. I believe it was called: Bloodbound, Destruction of the Protector.”

“Indeed, that was it,” she nodded, the name ringing a bell. “There was one particular page that appeared blank to everyone but me, that Merlin said contained some sort of secret.”

“What did you see on it?,” Adrian asked.

“Annie,” she whispered. “I saw my Annie.”

Adrian and Lily exchanged a confused glance and Adrian said, “You saw Anastasia’s likeness?”

“I know it sounds insane but she has been haunting me for centuries.” She traced a finger over the ancient runes carved into the decaying wood of the shelves. “The book was bound in red leather the colour of arterial blood the last time I saw it. The writing on the spine and on the cover was stitched in gold in a strange language that neither Serafine or I could decipher— a handwritten note stuck to the front was what allowed us to learn it’s name.”

“But we still do not know if that was it’s true title or simply what Merlin named it,” Serafine said. “Some of it was written in Latin but large portions were written in an odd language and not even he seemed to be able to read it.”

“Red book. Gold letters,” Lily nodded as she looked around at the vast collection they’d have to go through. “The one who finds it can have the first tequila shot when we make camp later.”

Adrian and Serafine chuckled in response as the each migrated to a different corner of the room to begin their search. Under normal circumstances she might’ve gotten excited by the prospect of devouring so many rare books and scrolls— on any other day if she’d come across one scroll written in hieroglyphs she would’ve been absolutely ecstatic. Never mind dozens upon dozens of them. However, not even artefacts that had clearly been stolen from The Library of Alexandria could brighten this night, and rather than stopping to read them she simply looked away.

They were here for one reason and one reason alone, and nothing would distract her from the only thing that mattered.

Every red book she came across was torn from its resting place on the shelves, sending clouds of dust into the air as they were disturbed. She recognised many dead languages that had been long forgotten when she opened them, and all of the books had the smell of an earlier time leaking out between their battered old pages. It was an incomparable odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages had been calmly hiding between the heavy covers. Breathing it in, she’d glance through a few pages before returning each book to its shelf when she eventually realised it wasn’t the book she was looking for.

“Did this book have hand drawn images of monsters in it by any chance?,” Adrian called after twenty minutes of searching.

“Yes,” she said quickly.

“Then I’ve found it.”

She was at his side in seconds, tearing the humongous book from his hands with so much excitement she almost made him lose his balance. Then, without a second thought she gave everything piled on the desk a hard shove, sending it all clattering to the floor with a series of loud noises as she rested the manuscript down on the tarnished wood.

“Those are artefacts of great historical significance,” Adrian winced. “Kamilah!”

She simply scoffed whilst flickering through well-worn pages, stopping the moment she arrived at the portrait of Anastasia hidden beneath a hood. “There she is,” she smiled, her fingertips grazing the length of red hair glistening on the page. “There’s my Annie.”

“I still cannot see her,” Serafine said.

“Nor can I,” Adrian added.

“Same,” nodded Lily.

“Well she’s there,” she breathed, her hand drifting to the wedding rings and the life’s blessing dangling delicately around her neck. “The writing on the opposite page— can you see that?”

“We can see it but we can’t read it...,” Serafine trailed off, her eyes locking on the necklace she was clutching. “I wonder...”

“What?,” prodded Lily.

“There was an ancient power bound to Anastasia’s blood,” she said. “This language, whatever it is, is very ancient... possibly even older than Rheya was— and Merlin said that Anastasia was never entirely human, and her mother insinuated the very same thing in her writings...”

“What are you saying exactly?,” she asked, every muscle in her body stiffening.

“A life’s blessing is a vial of blood—“

“No,” she snapped, her hand tightening protectively around the pendant. “This is one of the most precious things I own— the most precious thing! I am not going to drink the only thing I have left of her and—“

“I’m not saying drink the whole thing,” Serafine interjected. “Her blood was so powerful — even when we assumed she was a mere mortal — that a single drop should be enough to transfer some of that power to you temporarily.” She paused. “I have no physical proof that she’d be able to read it at all but every ounce of my being believes that she’d be able to decipher it with ease.”

“As do I,” Adrian said quietly. “You recall the first time we ventured to Mydiea and she was the one who figured out the password to get to the tree of life— she knew things the rest of us never could. Whatever this language is... it’s definitely supernatural. No mortal languages uses a script even remotely similar and— Kamilah, I think taking a drop of her blood may be our best option. I could take the book and try to decipher it but it could take decades... centuries, even. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“If she were here she’d be the one telling you to try,” added Lily. “It’s just one drop and if it doesn’t work, then at least we’ll know.”

She heaved a sigh but said nothing as she looked down at the likeness of her wife on the page and then up at the ball of red light glistening over their heads. Lily was right. Anastasia wouldn’t hesitate to do what was necessary and she’d be the first one to insist that she try. The idea of consuming even the smallest amount what little she had left of her simply didn’t sit well with her at all... but she had to try.

Tremors racked her freezing cold hands as she carefully unwound the ornate lid on top of the small glass vial. She was terrified she was going to somehow spill it or take too much... but she pressed the lip of the vial to her mouth anyway and took a sip before quickly screwing the cap back on. 

The moment Anastasia’s blood touched her tongue her fangs descended. Her eyes turned red. Deep inside her, a deep-rooted power that didn’t belong to her raged, seemingly buried in her psyche from eons before, percolating with a primordial awakening that had been long forgotten, until now.

The words on the page began to contort before her eyes. They spun and whizzed manically around the page, changing shape and snapping back to their original form over and over again, rearranging themselves with no discernible pattern. 

Then she noticed that the portrait was also moving and she leaned in so closely that her face was practically right in the book. Anastasia reached up and slowly pulled down her hood to reveal the entirety of her face, and though her mouth didn’t move, a ghostly voice shivered along her spine, whispering, “You found me, Kami.”

“It is her— I knew it was...” She stroked her beautiful face with the sides of her fingers as tears welled in her eyes and a few that she couldn’t contain splattered onto the page. “Hi, baby,” she whispered. “Annie... I knew it was you all along...”

The image of Anastasia brought a single finger to her lips and pointed with the other hand towards the opposite page, where the odd looking letters had now settled into a perfectly decipherable latin script. She glanced back at Anastasia and the image of her simply smiled, her blue eyes sparkling like sapphires as she pulled the hood back over her face and froze once again. No one knew what she had been through or what those pretty eyes had seen, but whatever she had conquered, whatever she truly was, it clearly shone through her mind — even in this portrait.

“The Lady of The Lake: Morgan le Fay, Daughter of Phampira,” she read slowly as her eyes scanned the ornately printed title and flickered down to a subheading written between quotation marks. “The greatest thing about having power is the mere having of power. Use the latter well, and you'll never have to use the former ~ Morgan le Fay.”

“Morgan le Fay?,” Adrian echoed, glancing at Lily. “She’s the sorceress you told us about that night after Anastasia tortured Merlin at City Hall.”

“Sorceress. Goddess. Depending on the source material you use she was either Merlin and King Arthur’s lover or their arch nemesis— there are others that I’ve seen that spin her into King Arthur’s sister but I find those stories kinda dull,” Lily nodded. “What does it say, Kamilah?”

“When the daughter of Phampira began to demonstrate her powers, she very soon mastered the ability to circumnavigate the world and come back again in a matter of seconds — much faster than Phampira could herself. Both in the air and on the earth she could hover at her ease, on the waves and far beneath them. She was totally indifferent as to whether she lived in the heat or, just as much at her ease, in the cold,” she read. “She was a marvel, her powers outshining her mother and the ancient gods, but like many powerful women, Morgan le Fay made enemies of other powerful beings. She knew men’s weaknesses and easily discounted their strengths. And she knew also that most improbable actions may be successful so long as they were undertaken boldly and without hesitation, for men believed beyond all reasonable proof to the contrary that blood was thicker than water and that a beautiful deity could not be uncontrollable.”

“The daughter of Phampira,” Serafine whispered.

She cleared her throat and continued reading, “When it took her fancy she could change a man into a bird or an animal, and she did so frequently when she was displeased. Mighty was she in magic and her life was greatly in defiance of the goddess which bore her, for at her command were the birds in the skies, in the woods and fields, and what seemed to be greatest, those evil spirits: Cambions.” She breathed deeply. “She was well capable of marvels for men always fought to bring gold and fall at her feet support in all her affairs, as well as the supernatural creatures that roamed the world. Phampira grew tired of her daughter’s influence and defiance and struck the girl down as quickly as she had raised her, cursing her to be incarnated once every century into the cursed bloodline of her nocturnal creation without a trace of her magic, forcing her to suffer the memories of her kin deep in hell: and thus, the vampire became her shadow.”

“Holy shit,” Lily breathed. “What in the motherfucking Percy Jackson is this shit? Yo, you fully fell in love with a fucking demigod incarnated as a Bloodkeeper and simultaneously said a huge ‘fuck you’ to the petty-ass-bitch Phampira when you turned her! Talk about a gay icon! The big dick energy is astounding—“

“Lily,” hissed Serafine.

She blinked, her breath constricting as she glanced back down at the page. “When her incarnations crossed paths with the vampire, they sent her their worship, even from the fires of battlefields across the world, as much as she wanted. Drawn to her, the vampire inexplicably sought to protect her from the ills of the world.” She rubbed at her eyes as she scanned the list of names she didn’t recognise that ended with ‘Anastasia Sayeed’ written in block capitals and double underlined. She continued, “When the last becomes the first, whatever she will have from this earth, she will take, without peril, in ample measure, without the selfishness or lack of restraint as in her predecessors. The Earth will bare her no roots, her power and identity will be as unfamiliar to her as to her followers — but the world will never have acquired a better mistress of all things magical than the resurrected.”

“Her name means resurrection... and she resurrected as a vampire after a four day Turning... and we’re once again trying to resurrect her,” Serafine gulped as she leaned against the desk, her hand rested on her chest. “Morgan le Fay was the daughter of Phampira... and she— I always felt Anastasia had lived before, as she was an old soul for one so young but I never imagined...”

“That was why Merlin was so afraid of her,” she whispered, her head spinning. “He knew all along and the woman in the picture— she might not be my Annie as I knew her at all. It’s her but it’s her when she was Morgan le Fay...”

At that she saw the woman in the picture’s lips twitching into a smile beneath the hood before the letters on the page began to scramble themselves back into that strange language once more. The portrait froze once again and Kamilah regarded it for a long time in silence as what she’d just learned sank in, she didn’t even realise there were tears pouring down her face until one hit the book.

Beneath the heavy cloak she saw a woman who physically and spiritually blocked out the definition of being celestial, and replaced it with her own divine beauty. If anything was clear to her after reading what she just had, it was that Anastasia hadn’t changed at all from her first life as Morgan le Fay. She was uncontrollable. Stubborn to a fault. Bold. Enchanting. Free-spirited. Unapologetic. All the things that would inevitably piss off anybody who dared try to control her without giving her an incentive to behave for.

Her fingers grazed the page once again and a soft sigh left her lips. She was transcendent. She was beyond astonishing. But what she truly was and what she truly had done with her life, which was beyond the scope of an average woman's power, was step above the barriers of reality and illusion with her pure, majestic, and omnipotent brilliance.

“The resurrection ritual is probably somewhere else in the book,” Serafine said, breaking the heavy silence that had fallen over the group. “I say we take it with us and start heading to camp. We still have to search for Anastasia’s co-ordinates and we must rest in order to do that—“

She was cut off as the ground beneath their feet began to shake and a horrifying rumbling sound echoed through the cave. The red light in the room expanded as green sparks began to fly wildly around the alcove they were in and without a word to each other, everyone began to run.

Grabbing the book, her booted feet pounded out an insane, frantic rhythm underneath her as she raced into the cavern and started off towards the exit at a dead sprint. Pieces of stalagmite and crystallised rock flew off the walls and hit the ground behind them in chunks as the cave began to collapse. Clearly whatever else was hidden in this book, Merlin really did not want to ever see the light of day.

Whilst the magic whirring around them might not have been able to touch them through Anastasia’s energy enveloping them, the pieces of rock weren’t so easily deterred. Adrian let out a loud groan as one hit his right hand, shattering all of the bones in it upon impact.

Lily scooped him up into a fireman’s hold and kept running with ease. 

“What are you doing?!,” he half-laughed-half-sobbed from the pain coming from his hand.

“Picking you up so we can run!"

"Don't be daft, my hand is broken, not my feet!"

"Right, that was stupid. Stupid— but in my defence, you have the pain tolerance of an infant,” she fired back without putting him down.

She and Serafine shared a bemused look as they ran and she clutched the heavy book tighter to her chest. She didn’t dare look behind her to see how much of the cave remained but the deafening crashes that assaulted her ears meant it obviously wasn’t a lot. Icy claws of fear squeezed her heart with every breath as she ran, relying on the soft red glow to light the way, and the glimpse she’d gotten of the layout on their way in, and her own instincts to figure out where to go. 

Serafine raced around one corner too sharply and slipped on a piece of mud, crashing hard on her right side. She gasped as it knocked the wind out of her and gritted her teeth as her fangs descended. Kamilah screamed at her to get up and run. And she pushed onto her knees, nursing what looked like severely bruised or possibly a few fractured ribs and a sprained ankle, and then paled as an unmistakable sensation traveled up the arm she’d used to push herself up.

Impact tremors as more of the cave collapsed into nothingness. As sharpened pieces of stalagmites shot like missiles trailed by green bolts of lightning all around them.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom, boom, boom.

Merlin had not just wanted to kill whoever dared happen upon his hideout.

No, he was hunting them from beyond the grave.

Kamilah grabbed her by the arm and steadied her onto her feet again, stumbling backwards and fumbling for her own balance all the while. The entrance of the cave was only a few hundred yards around the next corner, she was sure — but she had no way of knowing if they’d eventually run into a dead end if the entrance had already collapsed. 

But they ran on regardless. It was all they could do.

She blocked out the rising crescendo of crashes and booms and pictured the route they’d taken on the way in. A mile up the canyon wall that stood just outside the cave spilled back up to the forest. The only problem was that it was a long way with two injured vampires and a book that was so thick and heavy that she struggled to run with it in one hand as she supported Serafine. 

Lily called out to her, her voice ragged and shaking, but solid. “You aren’t about to die in this cave, Sugar Mama Sayeed. Move your ass.”

She glared at her with a smile on her face as they barrelled forward into the passageway to the right and saw that the entrance stood intact. Serafine hissed, barely suppressing a groan as a spike of pain lanced through her chest from her injured ribs. The adrenaline spiking through all of their bodies would only hold for so long and she already felt it burning out. 

Cold sweat plastered her hair to her face and ran down into her eyes. The short distance left of the tunnel stretching onward forever before her. Moonlight was in sight.

Chilly night air began to slap at her face as they gasped for air and tried to catch their breaths in the final marathon. 

An earth-shattering roaring sound rocked the very walls of the cavern as Adrian and Lily tumbled out into the canyon up ahead.

Boom, boom, boom, boom!

Boom, boom, boom, boomboomboomboom—

Mother of God, she thought, as she ran as fast as her legs could carry her until she and Serafine threw themselves out into the canyon, the cave collapsing entirely less than a second after they’d landed flat on their backs beside Adrian and Lily. The red light that had followed them disappearing once they were out of the reach of Merlin’s magic.

Their chests heaved violently and their thudding hearts beat like a symphony of drums as it hit them how close a call that had been.

“That’s it,” Lily panted. “Y’all are taking me to Disneyland on our next vacation. I’ve fucking earned the right to ride Its A Small World twelve times in a row and eat those giant Mickey pretzels whenever the hell I want— I mean, fuck this shit!”

Serafine laughed breathlessly and patted her leg to placate her. “That sounds marvellous right now.”

~~~~ 9 Weeks Earlier - New York, NY ~~~~

“So,” Lily said as they all took their seats on the couch in her little apartment in The Shadow Den. “Hold onto your wine glasses, fam, because Morgan le Fay is one bad bitch.”

“Lily,” she interjected, glaring over her glass of Pinot Grigio. “Less of the dramatics and more information would be appreciated.”

Lily shot her with finger guns as she cleared her throat. “Okay, Morgan le Fay, also called Morgana, Morgaine, Viviane, Nimuë, or The Lady Of The Lake, is the baddest bitch in the old Arthurian legends— which we hopefully all know Merlin plays a huge role in.” She sat herself down on the computer desk that held her gaming set up across the room that was backlit by cyan strip lights. “Her relationship with Arthur changes depending on the story. Sometimes she’s his sister. Others his side piece. Then you have the ones when she’s one evil motherfucker who just wants to fuck shit up and burn the goddamn patriarchy to the ground—“

“Lily,” snorted Serafine.

“I’m passionate about my mythological women, alright?,” she snorted before taking a sip out of the canned cocktail in her hand. “Let me live, god.”

“What is her relationship to Merlin?,” Anastasia asked.

“Again, it depends on the story. In stories where she is depicted as The Lady Of The Lake or Nimuë, she’s sometimes his girl. In the Vulgate version of Merlin, she refuses to give him her love until he has told her all of his secrets, then afterwards she betrays his ass.” She took another sip of her cocktail. “Depending on the telling, she either uses her powers to lock him away forever, originally either in the trunk of a hawthorn tree or beneath a stone. It’s often said that Merlin knew beforehand that this would happen due to his power of foresight, but he is unable to counteract her because of the truth this ability of foresight holds — it’ll happen to matter what. So then it’s said he decides to do nothing for the situation other than to continue to teach her his secrets until she takes the opportunity to trap him within a tree, underneath a large stone, or inside a cave or a tomb. In some tellings he’s also a rapey bastard and Morgan curses her own pussy to stop him raping her. But, again, it all really depends on the version of the story you wanna read— though, I gotta say, something about the cursed pussy version just makes me smile. Like... the power. Cursing your own goddamn pussy.”

She took a long sip out of her wine glass and gave her wife’s thigh a tight squeeze. Anastasia covered her hand with hers and gently stroked her thumb over her knuckles, soothing away any bad memories before they could surface.

“She locked him away,” Anastasia murmured, her brow furrowing. “That is interesting considering he disappeared for centuries...”

“Surely we would have known of this woman’s existence before now, if she were real,” Serafine said. “All those centuries we spent traipsing across the world with him— would we not have learned of her long before now?”

“His memories of her seemed buried pretty deep,” Anastasia said, her eyes taking on an oddly haunted look as she blinked heavily. “I only saw her from behind — and sort of from the side at one point — but I promise you that she was real... once. She looked like— never mind.”

“What?,” prodded Adrian.

Anastasia shook her head, her eyes growing more and more distant by the moment. “Nothing— it’s nothing. I’m just tired and my head still hurts a bit, I’m probably just confused about what I saw. It’s really nothing important.”

“My love, you’re exhausted,” she sighed, squeezing Anastasia’s hand. “This can wait—“

“It can’t wait,” Anastasia said softly. Her glazed, unfocused stare was starting to clear, and the cranky look she was used to being levelled at with when she was so exhausted started to take shape. “Whatever he has planned, it’s more than just because he hates mortals. The lines between love and hate are often blurred — right? — and whatever he feels for this Morgan le Fay has been motivating his actions for centuries. He hates most vampires as much as he hates mortals, believe it or not, and the whole time he was simply using Gaius and the original Order Of Avalon as a means to an end— his end goal was to rid the world of our kind, too... all except you, Kami. He planned to keep you.”

“Why would he do that?,” Kamilah asked, draining the contents of her glass. “Kill our kind, I mean. I know why the fool would want to keep me and I don’t need that explained.”

“It all has something to do with Morgan, I was just getting to it when he passed out,” Anastasia said as she ran a hand through her hair, her eyes taking on that haunted look once again. “I get the feeling that he thinks we took her from him, somehow. I’ve been trying to look back at the earliest living vampire memories since we left City Hall but I have nothing. Whatever he’s mad about, it was before Phampira even created our kind—“

“Then how can we be to blame?,” Lily asked.

Anastasia shook her head. “I don’t know. That’s what’s not making any sense to me— he may be a monster but he’s not someone who does anything without a reason. If he’s this angry, he has what he believes a logical reason to be. It just... doesn’t add up. None of this is adding up— what else do you know of her, Lil?”

“Well, again, it just all depends on the story,” Lily shrugged. “In one when she’s named Viviane, they say she was the daughter of a knight called Dionas and that she was born in her father’s domain of Briosque in Brocéliande Forest — and that she was enchanted by her fae godmother, Diana, and that was what attracted Merlin to her as a teenager.”

“And her mother?,” Anastasia asked hesitantly.

Lily shrugged. “No idea, but in the Vulgate Lancelot version Diana was once a Queen of Sicily and was considered to be a goddess by her subjects— Diana was the Roman goddess of the hunt and the moon, you know.”

Anastasia winced and rubbed at her head, and for a few moments her breath sounded incredibly laboured. Like she was just barely clinging to her psychic stability.

“That’s enough for tonight,” she said, stroking her wife’s hair. “You’re burnt out and you’re in pain. You are not going to be able to solve this puzzle if you work yourself to the point of a complete sensory overload— you’re already on the verge of one.”

Anastasia sighed and nodded tightly. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more use tonight—“

“You’ve done more than enough, ma petite,” Serafine said softly. “Go home to bed and we’ll regroup tomorrow.”

Kamilah knew that if her wife was willingly agreeing to go home to bed she must’ve been much more worn out than she was letting on. Stubborn girl that she was. She’d sooner have worked herself to the point of illness than willingly rested were it not for her stepping in and putting a stop to the frequently occurring madness.

“I’m sorry by the way,” Anastasia said quietly the moment they’d climbed out of the winding tunnel system that led to The Shadow Den.

“Whatever for?”

“I got a bit carried away with myself when I was torturing him.” She bit down on her bottom lip. “It can’t have been easy to see that side of me but I— when I heard him say your name after everything he did to you I just got so angry. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to make him suffer.”

“You wanted to avenge me,” she said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as she nodded her head. “I don’t think that’s anything to apologise for. I know I’d react the very same way were our roles reversed.”

“I don’t want to be like her, like Rheya. I don’t normally want to hurt anyone.” Anastasia sighed and anxiously popped her knuckles. “That was the only time besides Gaius that I’ve genuinely enjoyed causing another person pain. Am I going to turn into someone who enjoys hurting people before this is over, do you think?”

“No,” she said with absolute certainty. “You would sooner lay down your life before doing what he does, or what Gaius did, or Rheya— and you said as much to his face. You are caught between two worlds, Annie, just by being what you are. It’s natural that you will want the fire, that your power will want an outlet, that you would seek to protect me by showing him what would happen if he so much as thought about touching me again. It is your nature... but you will not fall, you are much stronger than anyone I’ve ever known— and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for doing what you did.” She sighed wistfully. “I cannot even begin to comprehend how many women would kill to see their rapists tortured like that— to see them suffering for what they chose to do in however unconventional a way.”

“The urge was to make him feel like he was being castrated but then I realised I’d actually have to think about his balls if I wanted to do that.”

She snorted and pressed her forehead against her temple as they walked. “What were you making him feel?”

“I made him feel like his head was being run over by a Subway again and again, whilst he was simultaneously being burnt alive and pecked to death by the penguins I like to visit at the zoo,” Anastasia smiled. “And I also made him feel like the chubby penguin who steals the other’s food — that I’ve named Albert — was shitting in his eyes just for my own amusement.”

At that she laughed out loud and shook her head in bemusement. With her face tilted up to her’s, the subtle edge of moonlight touched along the edge of one high cheekbone, the gentle edge of one eye, and those beautiful, enticing lips. Obeying an impulse she couldn’t put into words, she lowered her head and covered her mouth with her own.

“How I love it when you get protective,” she whispered, kissing the tip of her nose. “And before I forget, can I just enquire why you named a penguin Albert?”

“I read his mind and he seems like an Albert,” Anastasia shrugged. “I asked him if he liked the name and he didn’t make any angry penguin noises so I feel like that was all the approval I needed.”

There was something oddly endearing about the fact the strongest psychic in the world spent her free time making friends with penguins at the zoo rather than plotting world domination the way most other people with her power would. It spoke a lot of her gentle nature, she felt, and proved that she was the best person to bear such a burden. To have such power, yet be so reluctant to use it... it was a rare thing. 

A very rare thing, indeed.

~~~~ 2020 - New York, NY ~~~~

Kamilah stared down Adrian’s mortal assistant after she’d just completed some equation written on a whiteboard that her brother had been staring at for close to a century— and the girl had walked into the room, taken one look at it, and simply told her boss how to solve it.

Adrian was babbling in a corner, evidently in some state of shock.

The mortal scientists in the lab were practically screeching in excitement.

And this mortal woman who’d already captured her heart seemed so unbothered by whole thing that it was somewhat infuriating. Was it cockiness? Or was she really just that oblivious to her own brilliance?

“How did you do that?,” she asked the younger woman that she’d taken to her private pool only the night before.

Anastasia simply shrugged and her cheeks flushed. “I mean... it wasn’t exactly a difficult equation.”

“He has been struggling with that for a century...”

“Numbers just make sense to me,” Anastasia said simply. “Maths and science are easy because there are strict rules you have to follow to get the answers. Once you know them, you’re set.”

She’d never met someone so young who was so damn smart. Most twenty-two-year-old mortals she knew that worked at Ahmanet were either gauche or monosyllabic in her presence, but not Anastasia. There was a directness, a confidence in her icy-blue eyes that a lot of women twice her age never mastered.

Clearly this woman was getting laid far too easily— with a brain like that she must’ve had women throwing themselves at her feet.

Anastasia chewed on her bottom lip as she wrote and she momentarily lost her place in the quiet conversation between them. The impulse was to step right up into her space, slide her hand onto her waist and soothe that bottom lip with her tongue.

Warmth pooled between her legs at the thought but she was pretty sure she’d knee her there if she even attempted such a move in front of her boss. Even if her boss was only Adrian... her infuriating little brother and dearest friend.

Unfortunately, not even the prospect of that killed her desire for her.

“Not to be offensive or anything—“

“You know, when someone says that they’re almost always about to be offensive,” Anastasia smirked at her as she finished writing numbers on the whiteboard.

“Perhaps that’s the case with mortals,” she whispered. “I simply wondered why you are not working here as a scientist if problems like this one come to you so easily? Managing Adrian’s schedule and ensuring his days run smoothly seems beneath you.”

Anastasia giggled a little and then sighed. “Do you know how expensive the sort of doctorate degrees these people have are, especially for immigrants without any financial support from family? I will be drowning in debt from my undergrad courses at Belvoire until I’m in my fifties, maybe even my sixties— it’s just not an option right now.” She bit down on her lip as she switched pens and went about filling in a complex looking graph. “So I’m working close to Adrian, learning the industry from someone at the top, with the idea that eventually I’ll work my way to where I want to be— so I don’t think it’s beneath me at all. There’s a lot to be said about hard work and dedication, right?”

She swallowed thickly and nodded. “Indeed.”

If there was one thing she knew about Anastasia already, it was that she was stubborn and simply would not accept her financial aid even if she had to offer it wholeheartedly. Stubborn, bold, brilliant girl that she was. 

She’d only known her for a short while but if she thought for a single moment she would accept her help, she would’ve offered it right then and there. She wasn’t used to caring this much about another’s circumstances, to look at them and want nothing more than a chance to make them happy. A chance to give them the world. To spend every day putting them first.

The girl may have grown up in wealth and privilege but she’d clearly had to fight to be heard and seen. To be validated. To be something other than a piece to be moved around her parents’ Monopoly board. Rage had given her a voice against their manipulations and the guts to walk away and work as hard as she did for everything she earned. But the independence it had instilled in her had also become ingrained.

There was simply no way she’d ever accept her help, or anyone’s help, despite the fact her mind was quite clearly something special.

“There,” Anastasia said, stepping away from the whiteboard to another round of applause from the mortals in the room. She laughed awkwardly and rather than shying away from the attention, stuck two of her fingers up in the peace sign before taking a mock bow. 

Even Kamilah smiled at that.

“I— uh— Is it fine if I take my lunch break now, Adrian?”

“Of course!,” Adrian beamed, clapping louder than anyone else in the room. “Charge it to the company credit card you use when I send you on errands— whatever you want, on me.”

Anastasia laughed and nodded. “Don’t be surprised if I come back here drunk then because I’m in the mood for gin.”

“I look forward to it,” he chuckled.

Without thinking she began to follow her mortal out of the room, like a moth drawn to a flame. Adrian eyed her suspiciously, as did a few of the mortal scientists who thought themselves experts in every field (including her behaviour), but nobody said anything about how odd it was that she was quite obviously smitten with this woman.

“Are you joining me?,” Anastasia smiled.

“I do like gin,” she smirked.

“Great, we’ll go to this bar in SoHo. They make their own and it’s the best if you have a high alcohol tolerance— not that I’m admitting to getting drunk on gin every Friday night or anything.”

“Lily Spencer has told me all about your love of the drink and how you overestimate your constitution because you think coming from a Russian family in Kazakhstan makes you immune to alcohol.” She raised an amused brow at the mortal. “However, I am just letting you know right now that I will not be carrying you home if you get drunk on my watch.”

Anastasia laughed lightly. “You can just push me onto a subway if that happens. Drunk me gets around pretty easily.”

“Wait— you’re not insinuating we’ll be taking the subway are you?,” she said, pausing in her tracks. 

Anastasia stared at her. “How else do you plan on getting to SoHo from MidTown West?”

“My chauffeured Rolls Royce!,” she spluttered. “There are mortals on the subway!”

“What am I? A fairy?,” Anastasia teased before laughing. “I get an hour for lunch. It’ll take us that long to get there in the car at this time of day. The subway is the quickest way and I have a spare metro-card you can use, just trust me.”

“You’re not a fairy, fae are much more sparkly.”

The mortal paused. “Wait. Did you just tell me fairies are real?”

“I am a bloodsucking creature who has wandered the Earth for more than two thousand years,” she said, “are you honestly trying to tell me that after everything you have learned and bore witness to, you thought vampires were the only creatures in the world?”

Anastasia huffed and rolled her eyes but didn’t answer the question. “And in two thousand years you’ve never taken the subway, have you?”

She heaved a sigh, not wanting to admit to having never taken the subway before... but Anastasia seemed to sense it and looped her arm through hers.

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe.”

She snorted and rolled her eyes. “You are five feet tall and really very skinny. I’m not sure you could protect me from a drunken average height mortal on the subway— somebody will end up getting stabbed.”

Anastasia started laughing before her sweet smile turned into a pout. “I’m five foot one and three quarters, thank you very much.”

“Oh, excuse me. Five foot one and three quarters— but is that three quarters of an inch really that important?”

“It makes me almost five foot two.”

Noticing they were the only ones in the hallway, she backed her mortal against one of the walls, revelling in the way her heartbeat sped up. There was no fear. No hesitation. She wasn’t sure if the girl was foolish or merely too naive to know better than to trust a vampire so willingly... but either way it meant a great deal to her that she wasn’t afraid of her at all.

“You are an enigma,” she breathed.

“I am?”

She kissed her then. Not tentative. Not polite. This was no first-kiss kiss. It was demanding. Dirty. And it went on and on. Deep, open-mouthed, head-twisting, tongue-fucking, zero-cares-in-the-world-kissing.

Even the night before their making out had not been quite so... vigorous.

She ran her hands over the mortal’s body and Anastasia mirrored her actions. Before she could stop herself, she moaned into her mouth when her hands stroked over a particularly sensitive point on her ribs. She practically melted into her touch.

It had been a long time since she’d been kissed so thoroughly. So masterfully. So…absolutely. Her kisses had blown her mind, and any embarrassment she might’ve felt for moaning faded away the moment Anastasia made an equally pleased sound against her lips.

“Annie,” she breathed. It was a nickname she’d first used to tease her the night before upon hearing from Lily that it irritated her — something to do with a redheaded singing orphan that she simply had no desire to understand.

“Annie, what?” Anastasia murmured, her voice as husky as hers as she flicked her gaze to her face. “Annie, stop? Annie, leave?” She slid a hand low on her stomach, the muscles beneath tensing in anticipation. “Annie, touch me?” 

A lazy finger stroked the skin through the space between the buttons on her blouse above the waist band of her pants, the sensation coursing white hot need straight between her legs. Anastasia seemed to sense it and strategically pushed one of her thighs between hers, making her eyes roll back.

If anyone had told her only a month earlier that she’d basically be dry humping a twenty-two-year-old mortal she’d met only weeks prior in a Raines Corp hallway, she’d have stabbed them immediately. But here she was and she could not get enough.

Her body throbbed with need and she knew that if she didn’t stop soon, she’d wind up orgasming right there in that damn hallway. 

She had wanted to get her naked for quite some time. Horizontal. She wanted to put her hands all over her. Her mouth all over her. She hated her clothes. And her own. She wanted them off. She wanted to imprint herself on her skin, regardless of the fact they were in a public hallway and could be interrupted at any moment.

She lightly scraped her fangs against her neck, testing the waters to see how she’d react — and the moan it elicited was better than anything she could’ve imagined. 

“By the way, if you call me Annie, be prepared to be called Kami,” Anastasia laughed quietly, pushing her thigh up between her legs harder as she continued to litter little bites down the side of her neck. 

She smiled softly and kissed the pulse point just below her ear. “The audacity... Annie.”

She smiled that smile again. How could something so lazy do such busy things to her body? “What do you want?” she whispered against her hair. “Tell me what you want, Kami.”

No one had ever called her that before. The fact that it had come from a woman more than two thousand years her junior should have been ridiculous. But it wasn’t. It curled her toes.

She looked down at her and their gazes meshed for long moments as their chests heaved. The mortals shuddered breath hit her system like a drug and she was in thrall. Of her potency. And her own. She didn’t want to stop grinding along her thigh like her life depended on it. She wanted to keep going, keep touching her like this until she lost control, and even if someone happened upon them she would want to keep going. She wanted to bring her to her knees, this cocky young mortal who was quite clearly a bratty bottom, who called her Kami and made her want things she hadn’t even realised how much she’d been missing for the past century... possibly even her whole life.

She’d be able to hear if someone was coming, wouldn’t she?

“You’re driving me crazy.” Anastasia’s ragged words were barely louder than a whisper but wicked hot against her ear. And she didn’t sound cocky or so sure of herself now. She sounded completely at her mercy. Like she might just die if she stopped dragging herself along her thigh.

To have said she was curious about her was putting it mildly. She was so curious that she couldn’t even form words; curious about the noises she might make if she kissed her properly on sensitive spots littered across her body and the colour of her nipples and what she tasted like between her legs and how she sounded as she came. She was curious about where and how she liked to be touched and whether she’d let her completely take charge of things the way she enjoyed and if she liked going down on her sexual partners. She was curious about the elegant line of her spine and the curve of her hips and how she would look straddled atop her, her hair loose, her breasts bouncing as she pushed her over the edge.

Or curled up beside her in bed, naked, her body branded by her own.

“Can I?,” she moaned against her neck, summoning the strength to speak at last. “Not that I usually do this in a hallway or... anywhere—“

“Go right ahead. And even if you did have a thing for this,” Anastasia whispered in her ear, “I wouldn’t have any issues with that.”

A surge of heat shot from her core at that. “You’re just so damn temping...”

“I’m sorry,” Anastasia smirked, watching her through wanton eyes. “For being so tempting.”

She snorted. “No you’re not.”

The mortal laughed. “You’re right. I’m not.”

Anastasia bit down on her bottom lip as she edged closer and closer to breaking. Her pleasure was fully exposed to her gaze and she looked her fill, breathing out hard as she guided her hips with one hand and stroked at her stomach through her blouse.

“Can you—“ She cut herself off with a moan.

“You want me to, here?,” Anastasia smirked, clenching her thigh.

“Annie,” she gasped as she rubbed her intimately through her clothes and things inside her pants started to go into meltdown. “This is crazy— I’m usually the one in control...”

“I know,” Anastasia smiled, her voice strained. “God… don’t you think I know that?”

“Just the one finger.” Her voice was like gravel. “That’s all I need— just touch me, please.”

She nodded urgently and dragged her blue gaze down, to where her left hand tugged the zip of her pants down and slipped past the dark maroon coloured fabric.

Her finger pushed in further, moving the lacy edge of her underwear out of the way and disappearing entirely beneath the fabric while her remaining fingers stayed firmly on the outside.

She moaned and closed her eyes against the wickedly delicious feel of it — feeling her get her off, with just one finger. She moaned against her neck at the delicious invasion, arching her back and curling her fingers into her neck. 

“Kami.” She pressed a kiss to her cheek and groaned. It echoed down her spine and she shivered. “You’re so fucking wet.”

There was nothing glamorous about the kiss she drew the mortal into. It was breathy and sloppy and noisy, more passion than finesse, but it was like a hit of speed tripping  
through her ancient blood, rippling pleasure through her thighs and buttocks and stomach, their heads twisting greedily in time to the wild buck of her hips and circles made by Anastasia’s finger.

And that was all it took.

She shattered for the first time in front of Anastasia in a public hallway... and it was one of the most beautiful moments of her life.

“That was miraculous,” Anastasia whispered in her ear, sending another shock of pleasure through her body as she drew to a stop and withdrew her finger.

Her eyes widened as she made a show of sucking it clean. 

“And you taste amazing.”

This woman was maddening. Bloody maddening.

She swallowed thickly and stared at their reflection in one of the mirrors that lined the wall. One small hand lay flat against her nape, the other stroked at her back over her clothes. Her body shook from the pleasure and she didn’t recognise the woman who stared back at her in the mirror, her face all flushed, her mouth parted, her head fallen forwards against Anastasia’s shoulder having lost its capacity to support itself. 

Had anyone ever left her like this after merely rubbing against her? If they had, she couldn’t recall it.

“I’m getting you back for that,” she panted. “I have never so shamelessly gotten myself off on another’s body like that.”

Anastasia laughed softly and affectionately stroked her hair. “I’ll look forward to it. And just so you know, you are welcome to shamelessly use my body to get off any time you want— now can you walk or do you need to call that fancy Rolls Royce of yours to come pick you up?”

She huffed as she pulled the zipper on her trousers back up. “What does it take in this day and age for a vampire to silence these bratty remarks from her woman?”

Her woman. She realised what she’d said the moment she’d said it. Part of her knew she should object to the wording. She wasn’t her woman. They technically weren’t together like that. But the heaviness between her legs had bloomed into something much fuller and fuck it, she liked the way it sounded on her lips while she still had her pinned to the wall as she publically groped her.

“I guess you’ll just have to torment me to find out, won’t you?”

She chuckled softly. “Indeed I will, Annie.”

“You know,” Anastasia said as they started walking towards the elevator, “I was wrong before — when we were at your pool — when you asked me what the best part of living in New York was.”

“And you said the penguins at the zoo,” she smirked.

“You’re definitely the best part— the penguins are second now.”

Her breath stuttered in her lungs. Nobody had ever said anything so sweet to her in her life. She’d been told she was gorgeous and beautiful and sexy by men and women who’d been keen to get her into bed but she’d never been told she was the best part of anybody’s anything.

There really was nothing like the cold, sharp steel of a dagger, the soft moan of an appreciative woman or the sharp burn of a good single malt to make a woman grateful to be alive. And before she could second guess it, she pressed a lingering kiss to her brow in response to what she’d said. A clear and very intimate sign that what she was feeling was more than merely the beginnings of a fling. Anastasia wasn’t just another woman to her. 

Deep in her bones she knew she was special.


End file.
